Friday was flexing day again down at Camp Runamuck. New sanctions against various Russian oligarchs were announced in response to the Russian ratfcking that was so central to the successful Republican campaign in 2016. From The New York Times:

The sanctions are designed to penalize some of Russia’s richest industrialists, who are seen in the West as enriching themselves from Mr. Putin’s increasingly authoritarian administration. They grow out of an oddly disjointed policy toward Russia on the part of the Trump administration: While President Trump continues to call for good relations with Mr. Putin, Congress and much of the rest of the administration are pushing through increasingly punitive efforts that are sinking relations with Moscow to lows not seen in years. “The Russian government operates for the disproportionate benefit of oligarchs and government elites,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. “Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government’s destabilizing activities.”

(Yeah, hearing Steven Mnuchin, the Foreclosure King, inveighing against a government’s operating for the “disproportionate benefit of oligarchs and elites” makes me want to eat glass, too.)

There are some obvious considerations here, the most obvious one being that “imposing” sanctions and “enforcing” sanctions are two distinctly different things. We’re going to have to see if the administration* actually enforces the sanctions it announced on Friday. Another one is pointed out in this NBC News story that was flagged by Sarah Kendizor, whose work on this issue has been invaluable.

One U.S. official noted that the delay in initiating sanctions against the oligarchs responsible for meddling in the 2016 U.S. election has muted their effect. He said that the oligarchs have had a year to restructure their U.S. holdings. "They had to know these were coming," he said.

In other words, the targets of the sanctions had ample opportunity to bunker their assets against any action taken by this administration. Iran-Contra obsessives refer to this as The Meese Gambit—named after Edwin Meese, Ronald Reagan’s attorney-general, who didn’t blow the whistle on that scandal until he’d given the various miscreants time to get the burn bags full and the shredders operating at top volume. You will have to forgive me if I don’t give the administration* the benefit of the doubt on this one.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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