President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday authorizing the US to impose sanctions on countries or people that try to interfere in American elections.

“This is intended to be a very broad effort to prevent foreign manipulation of the political process,” national security adviser John Bolton told reporters in a briefing on Trump’s order.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said the order is an effort to respond to Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

But Coats said the order will apply not just to Russia but to others, including China, North Korea and Iran.

“We have seen signs of (meddling) not just Russia, but from China … from Iran and even North Korea,” Coats said. “We’re taking nothing for granted here.”

The Departments of State and Treasury would decide on appropriate sanctions to recommend and impose – including freezing assets, limiting access to US financial institutions, and prohibiting US citizens from investing in companies involved.

Trump has been criticized for his response to Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential elections – and the intelligence community believes Moscow is continuing its attempts to interfere in the run-up to the Nov. 6 midterm elections.

In July, Trump was criticized for not publicly confronting Russian President Vladimir Putin about the election interference during a summit in Helsinki.

Instead, he seemed to accept Putin’s denials that Moscow sought to influence the election.

Coats said Washington is not seeing the intensity of Russian meddling that was experienced in 2016, but didn’t rule it out.

The Trump administration has worked to appear tough on election meddling, despite the president’s waffling.

“President Trump is committed to protecting our nation’s elections from foreign interference and has made it clear that his administration will not tolerate foreign interference in our elections from any nation state or other malicious actor,” said Garrett Marquis, a spokesman for the National Security Council, CNN reported.

With Post wires