In this week’s fact-checking video, CNN’s Jake Tapper discusses Hillary Clinton’s misleading claim that President Donald Trump has shown a “complete unwillingness to stop” Russian interference in U.S. elections.
As Tapper explains, while some critics may argue the president isn’t doing enough, the fact is his administration has taken a number of steps to combat foreign interference in future elections.
Among the actions taken by Trump and his administration:
- The Department of Treasury imposed sanctions against Russians who have been indicted for allegedly interfering in the 2016 presidential election.
- Trump signed an executive order giving the president discretion to impose sanctions on foreign countries that interfere in U.S. elections.
- The Department of Homeland Security has developed partnerships with all 50 states to help local elections officials defend against any election interference.
- The FBI is working with social media and technology companies to combat influence campaigns such as the one Russia allegedly engaged in during the 2016 election.
- The Director of National Intelligence is leading an inter-agency working group of cyber and intelligence experts to improve election security.
Trump has sent mixed messages on Russian meddling, at times acknowledging that he believes U.S. intelligence officials who concluded Russians interfered in the 2016 election. Other times, the president has called the investigation “a big hoax.”
Nonetheless, he and the administration — at his direction — have taken numerous steps to combat Russian election meddling.
“This appears to be one of those cases where the president’s words belie his actions,” said Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at MIT and a co-author of a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on ways the government can work to protect U.S. elections from outside interference. “The federal government has done quite a lot to address Russia’s ongoing interference with America’s elections.”
To read more on this topic, see our story, “Clinton Goes Too Far in Criticizing Trump.”
FactCheck.org and CNN’s “State of the Union” have been collaborating on fact-checking videos since September 2015. Past videos can be found on FactCheck.org.