Today is Friday, April 16th, and you're listening to The Morning Announcements, presented

by Betcha's Media.

This episode is brought to you by KOM, the number one mental wellness app.

Sleep more, stress less, live better with KOM, I'm Sammy Sage.

Today's first two stories involve walks down memory lane to the Trump administration's

election interference.

For our first story, Russia is back in the news.

This time because the Biden administration levied sanctions against 16 entities and

16 individuals that it accuses of attempting to influence the 2020 and 2016 elections,

as well as in response to the more recent solar winds hack.

Last month, an intelligence assessment concluded that Trump and his closest allies publicly

embraced Russia's 2020 disinformation campaign against Biden, met with Russian linked

officials who were part of the effort and promoted their conspiracy theories.

Two individuals involved in the election interference who were sanctioned were Russia's

first deputy chief of staff, Alexey Gromov, who leads the Kremlin's use of media, and

Constantin Kalimnik, a Russian and Ukrainian political consultant and known Russian intelligence

agent, who was given Trump campaign polling data from then campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

What a throwback Paul Manafort.

The polling data that Manafort gave them was significantly helpful information for their

interference campaign, and it's quite a significant development that this is now on

the record by the government.

Also under new sanctions are a slew of disinformation outlets and individuals and entities operating

...