A senior Donald Trump aide speculated on Thursday that President Barack Obama's move to sanction Russia over election-year hacking allegations could be, in part, a political move designed to tie the president-elect's hands as he takes office.

Obama's White House expelled nearly three dozen Russian diplomats earlier in the day, and forced the closure of two U.S. waterfront estates used by Russian intelligence operatives.

Kellyanne Conway reacted in a Fox News Channel interview to a New York Times report that those moves 'appeared intended to box in President-elect Trump, who will now have to decide whether to lift the sanctions on Russian intelligence agencies when he takes office next month.'

Conway snarked: 'I hope that this isn't motivated by politics even a little bit.'

She said she was referring specifically to 'the allegation or the supposition that perhaps one reason that the sanctions are taking place is to "box in" President-elect Trump, forcing him to take a position or otherwise once he takes office.'

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Kellyanne Conway, the newly minted senior counselor to President-elect Donald Trump, scolded the Obama White House for attempting to 'box in' his successor with a raft of new sanctions against the Russian government

Obama ejected 35 Russian diplomats allegedly spying for President Vladimir Putin (left) on Thursday; Putin decided not to respond in kind

Obama has engaged an eleventh-hour torrent of regulation, executive orders and diplomatic snubs, throwing tacks in the road ahead of Trump as he prepares to hand over the Oval office on January 20.

In addition to Thursday's unprecedented actions against Moscow, he allowed an anti-Israel resolution in the United Nations Security Council to pass unopposed a week ago rather than wielding America's traditional veto.

Obama used the 110-year-old Antiquities Act this week to unilaterally declare the existence of two national monuments this week in Utah and Nevada, angering Republicans in both states who see it as a land-grab inked without any consultation.

The move puts 1.65 million acres of U.S. land off-limits to energy exploration, cattle grazing and other development.

'[This] midnight move is a slap in the face to the people of Utah, attempting to silence the voices of those who will bear the heavy burden it imposes,' Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz said Wednesday in a statement.

On Dec. 20 the outgoing president banned oil and gas drilling across hundreds of millions of acres owned by the federal government in the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans.

The FBI and Homeland Security Department illustrated on Thursday how Russian operatives targeted computer networks of American political parties and government agencies, potentially impacting the result of November's presidential election

Russia's embassy in London mocked the Obama administration's new sanctions on Thursday, calling the outgoing president a 'lame duck'

Two days later he scrapped the last vestiges of a 9/11-era program that the Bush administration once used to force adult males from Muslim-majority countries to register with American immigration authorities.

The National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, soon to be erased from the nation's regulatory books, was thought to be a logical framework Trump's aides could use to fulfill a campaign promise to track immigrants and visa holders from terror-prone nations – part of a philosophy he called 'extreme vetting' as he ran for the White House.

Conway took a dim view of the sudden whirlwind of activity at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

'I think within the last couple of days you see this flurry of activity by a "tough" President Obama as he exits the office,' she reflected.

'And I guess is just burnishing his last couple of moments,' she mused, cautioning that Trump 'will have an opportunity to re-examine our relationship geopolitically, across the globe' once he takes office.

She specifically took aim at the Russia sanctions, wondering aloud if they will have much effect.

'This is great political fanfare and largely symbolic, but will it have impact? Will these sanctions have impact?' Conway asked.

Among other hacking penalties, the U.S. government shuttered this 45-acre Maryland compound used as a Russian 'spy base'

Another compound shut down by Obama's State Department is Killenworth, the Glen Cove estate on the North Shore of Long Island once owned by George Dupont Pratt

Moscow's spy agency targeted by Obama's moves, the so-called 'Main Intelligence Directorate, is known by the initials GRU, short for the Russian name 'Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye.'

'The GRU, where these operatives are, they don't really travel here, they don't keep their assets here,' Conway said.

'So one wonders, you know, what the teeth of those sanctions really are.'

Hanging in the air as Obama levied penalties on Moscow is the rationale for the punishments, the White House's contention that a series of Moscow-driven computer hacks compromised Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy so much that they delivered the White House to Trump.

The net effect has been to delegitimize Trump's surprising victory, a development that the outgoing president has avoided acknowledging is his overall goal as he transitions back into private life.

'That would be very unfortunate if politics were the motivating factor here,' Conway (right) said of Obama's flurry of last-minute activity; 'We can't help but think that's often true'

Obama put Trump between a rock and a hard place last week when he ordered his United Nations ambassador not to stand in the way of an anti-Israel resolution that angered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left)

Obama was personally involved in Clintons failed campaign in its final month, actively urging Americans to choose her as his successor. Americans hadn't seen such a level of engaged campaigning by a sitting president in generations.

Conway will have the title 'Senior Counselor to the President' in the West Wing of the White House three weeks from now, giving her words significant weight as the world anxiously awaits the advent of a new administration.

Trump on Thursday night took a wait-and-see approach to Obama's slap at Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that it was 'time for our country to move on to bigger and better things.'

He also pledged to meet with U.S. intelligence officials next week to hear them out and examine the evidence on which Obama acted.

Among Obama's other eleventh-hour moves that will make Trump's tenure more difficult is the naming of new national monuments in Nevada and Utah (shown) putting 1.65 million acres of land off limits to energy exploration, cattle grazing and other development

Conway hinted that the Obama White House may have been hoping to 'bait him into a bigger response,' but warned the current administration that 'you can't have it both ways.'

'You can't on the one hand say, "Hey, just one president at a time" – and we have one for the next 22 days or so named President Barack Obama – but at the same time you want the president-elect to make new policy.'

She reiterated in an interview on CNN that the Russia sanctions were likely in part a political move calculated to make Trump's transition loaded up with rocks and hard places.

'Even those who are sympathetic to President Obama on most issues are saying that part of the reason he did this today was to, quote, "box in" President-elect Trump,' Conway said.

'That would be very unfortunate if politics were the motivating factor here. We can't help but think that's often true.'