Late Monday, in response to a looming deadline from Congress, the Treasury Department released a list of Russian oligarchs suspected of having ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Now, the Department is admitting the list it presented was ripped from Forbes magazine, BuzzFeed reports.
The Trump administration was dismissive yesterday of the deadline to enforce the imposed sanctions of Russia, passed nearly unanimously by Congress in response to election hacking, saying that the threat of sanctions was already doing the job.
The Treasury Department did, at the last minute, release a Russian oligarch list, an unclassified annex to its report on sanctions. It supposedly consisted of businessmen in Russia who had close ties to Putin, but it drew suspicion because it closely mirrored a list of Russian billionaires released by Forbes.
When pressed on the similarities and whether there was any truth that the list was ripped from Forbes, a Treasury Department spokesperson said “yes.”
You can read BuzzFeed’s full story here.
H/T BuzzFeed