Rudy Giuliani insists President Obama's sanctions against Russia are "petty little actions"

The former New York City mayor doesn't think Obama's actions will do much

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published December 30, 2016 7:34PM (EST)

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani laughs as he arrives at Trump Tower, Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016, in New York.  (AP)
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani laughs as he arrives at Trump Tower, Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016, in New York. (AP)

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani described President Barack Obama's new sanctions against Russia as "petty" and "too little too late" during an appearance on "Fox & Friends" on Friday morning.

"Petty little actions like this don't mean very much," Giuliani said of the punishment that outed intelligence agents, closed Russian compounds, and ousted 35 Russian government personnel.

"It's almost a mockery to say this is too little too late. It should have been done 10 months ago, 11 months ago, 12 months ago. If it is really true, the response should be much stronger."

Giuliani also thought that President-elect Donald Trump should seek intelligence that didn't come from the Obama administration.

"There's no question that the intelligence that President Obama has been getting has either been incompetent or politicized," Giuliani said. That said, he did urge Trump to determine his own culprit for the DNC hacking and "bang them back really hard."

As Ira Winkler of The Hill wrote on Friday, Obama's actions against the 35 people declared personae non grata could actually be "devastating" to both those individuals and the Russian intelligence community.

"Assuming these people are involved in active intelligence operations, there are three interrelated areas of significant damage," Winkler wrote. "1. Publicly exposing the person as a known intelligence operative; 2. Disrupting active intelligence-gathering operations without the time required to transition operations to another operative; and 3. Permanently ruining that person's career in operations."

"Combined, these create a domino effect that can seriously impact intelligence-gathering activities inside and outside the U.S. for many years to come," Winkler added.

 


By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

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Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Barack Obama Donald Trump Rudy Giuliani Russia Hacks Vladimir Putin