Grilled by Democrats during a congressional hearing, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin rejected suggestions that the administration was delaying action on Russia and said that additional action would be taken. “There will be sanctions out of this report,” he said.

But when Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, pressed him on whether he agreed that Mr. Putin “has acted like a thug,” Mr. Mnuchin demurred.

“Um, I’m not going to use that terminology,” Mr. Mnuchin said, “but there are clearly issues that we need to address and that we have done with sanctions.”

“Let’s go through the list,” Mr. Kennedy replied. “Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, he meddled in our election, he’s helping North Korea cheat. I mean it seems to me in terms of sanctions, we only hit him so hard he’s coughing up bones. I mean he’s not getting better. He’s getting worse.”

The announcements came just days after two senior Russian intelligence officials traveled to Washington to meet with Mike Pompeo, the C.I.A. director. Sergey Y. Naryshkin, director of the foreign intelligence service, was in Washington last week for consultations on terrorism, according to Russian state media, even though he was sanctioned by the American government under President Barack Obama.

According to an American official, he was accompanied by Alexander V. Bortnikov, director of the domestic intelligence service, who has not been sanctioned. The C.I.A. would not confirm the meeting but said any interactions would have been in accordance with American law.

In an interview with the BBC that was broadcast on Monday, Mr. Pompeo said he anticipated that Russia would try to interfere in this year’s midterm congressional elections. “Of course,” he said. “I have every expectation that they will continue to try and do that, but I’m confident that America will be able to have a free and fair election, that we will push back in a way that is sufficiently robust that the impact they have on our election won’t be great.”