Citing “deepfakes” and “targeted disinformation campaigns,” the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced on Tuesday sanctions against affiliates of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), alleging they “aimed to stoke socio-political tensions and influence the U.S. electorate during the 2024 U.S. election.”

Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz may have been the target of one such effort, according to a previous Washington Post report.

“Today’s actions build on sanctions previously imposed on the IRGC, the GRU, and their numerous subordinate and proxy organizations, pursuant to several authorities targeting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and malicious cyber-enabled activities,” the U.S. State Dept. wrote in a press release.

“The Governments of Iran and Russia have targeted our election processes and institutions and sought to divide the American people through targeted disinformation campaigns,” said Acting Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley T. Smith. “The United States will remain vigilant against adversaries who would undermine our democracy.”

READ MORE: Trump Medicare Pick Dr. Oz Says Uninsured ‘Don’t Have Right to Health’ in Resurfaced Clip

Treasury adds that the Moscow-based Center for Geopolitical Expertise (CGE) “directs and subsidizes the creation and publication of deepfakes and circulated disinformation about candidates in the U.S. 2024 general election. CGE personnel work directly with a GRU unit that oversees sabotage, political interference operations, and cyberwarfare targeting the West.”

“At the direction of, and with financial support from, the GRU, CGE and its personnel used generative AI tools to quickly create disinformation that would be distributed across a massive network of websites designed to imitate legitimate news outlets to create false corroboration between the stories, as well as to obfuscate their Russian origin,” the Treasury Dept. said. “In addition to using generative AI to construct and disseminate disinformation targeting the U.S. electorate in the lead up to the U.S. 2024 general election, CGE also manipulated a video it used to produce baseless accusations concerning a 2024 vice presidential candidate in an effort to sow discord amongst the U.S. electorate.”

Treasury did not specify who that candidate was, but reporting from The Washington Post suggested in previous reporting that it may have been Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz.

In October, The Washington Post reported that a “former deputy Palm Beach County sheriff who fled to Moscow and became one of the Kremlin’s most prolific propagandists is working directly with Russian military intelligence to pump out deepfakes and circulate misinformation that targets Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, according to Russian documents obtained by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post.”

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The Post’s Catherine Belton reported that the “documents show that John Mark Dougan, who also served in the U.S. Marines and has long claimed to be working independently of the Russian government, was provided funding by an officer from the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service.”

“Disinformation researchers say Dougan’s network was probably behind a recent viral fake video smearing Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, which U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday was created by Russia. It received nearly 5 million views on X in less than 24 hours, Microsoft said.”

The Washington Post’s Belton, pointing to the Treasury Dept. press release said it confirmed the Post’s reporting from October.

“Though none of the entities sanctioned by the Treasure [sic] Department Tuesday are affiliated with China,” NBC News adds, “the department said in a separate letter Monday that its computers had been hacked in a state-sponsored Chinese operation in ‘a major incident.’ China denied that allegation.”

In September, Trump suggested he would remove sanctions on Russia, Iran, and China, The New Republic reported.

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Mehmet Oz, widely recognized as television’s “Dr. Oz” and President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head Medicare and Medicaid, has sparked controversy over resurfaced remarks from a 2013 speech, where he addressed the balance between personal and governmental responsibility for the uninsured.

Dr. Oz told members of the National Governors’ Association (video below) that uninsured Americans “don’t have the right to health,” but should be given “a way of crawling back out of the abyss of darkness of fear over not having the health they need.” That, he suggested, could come via physicals in a “festival-like setting.”

Oz, described by the AP as a “celebrity heart surgeon turned talk show host and lifestyle guru,” had urged members of the NGA to “think about” those physicals, promoting them as “incredibly inexpensive to run,” while declaring that “local hospitals will fund” them.

“You can screen thousands of people for almost nothing, and you allow a conversation and take place in more of a festival-like setting,” Oz said. “It’s not scary, and I mentioned earlier that almost everybody’s come into our 50-minute physicals has a job, but a lot don’t have insurance.” (At one point he appears to say “15-minute physicals,” and at another, “50-minute physicals.”)

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“Give them a way of crawling back out of the abyss of darkness of fear over not having the health they need, and give them an opportunity, cause they don’t have the right to health, but they have the right to access a chance to get that health.”

Earlier this month top Senate Democrats, in a letter to Oz, questioned both his qualifications to become the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, along with what they described as his previous call to privatize Medicare.

Democrats, led by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), in the letter, expressed to Oz, “concerns about your advocacy for the elimination of Traditional Medicare and your deep financial ties to private health insurers.”

NBC News reported that the “Democrats referred to a 2020 opinion piece that Oz co-wrote calling for putting all Americans into Medicare Advantage, effectively replacing the traditional Medicare program in which the government directly insures Americans 65 and older in tandem with private insurance plans.”

“Indeed, private insurers that run the Medicare Advantage program drastically overcharge for care,” the senators wrote, NBC News reported, saying they were “citing analysis from the nonpartisan Medicare Payment Advisory Committee.”

The Hill added that the Democrats “said they were especially concerned about Oz’s potential conflicts of interest. Oz reported owning more than $550,000 in UnitedHealth stock in his 2022 financial disclosures. UnitedHealth is the largest private insurer under Medicare Advantage and largest employer of physicians in the nation.”

“The company is currently under a sprawling antitrust investigation by the Department of Justice — including for its role in aggressively upcoding Medicare Advantage enrollees to secure higher payments from CMS — and has been sued on multiple occasions for Medicare fraud. Under your plan, UnitedHealth’s revenue from Medicare Advantage would roughly double to $274 billion annually,” the Democrats wrote.

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In 2022, when the video first resurfaced during Oz’s failed campaign to become a Republican U.S. Senator for Pennsylvania, criticism was strong.

“This is such a crazy thing to say: ‘they don’t have the right to health’???” remarked journalist Soledad O’Brien.

Other commenters have also weighed in.

“As someone who studied health and healthcare in Guatemala, this sounds awful familiar,” wrote Dr. Caitlin Baird. “T minus two years until these ‘clinics’ are provided by ‘missionaries’ and pre-med volunteers with zero medical training.”

“For a physician to say that the uninsured don’t have the right to health is so unethical I am at a loss for word,” remarked pediatrician Jeffrey W Britton.

“This is the guy Trump wants in charge of healthcare for millions of Americans who cannot afford the healthcare he has access to,” observed former investigative reporter Jayne Miller. “’15 minute physicals’ Then what?”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Dr. Oz said the uninsured “don’t have the right to health,” but should be given “a way of crawling back out of the abyss” with “15-minute physicals” provided by the government “in a festival like setting.” pic.twitter.com/YMyhpZfEFI

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) September 7, 2022

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Donald Trump is claiming that Senate Democrats are planning to employ stalling tactics, including “all sorts of tricks,” to delay confirmation of his highly-controversial slate of nominees, and he’s directing Republicans to stop them. The President-elect’s message comes after his incoming White House Chief of Staff ordered all nominees to stop posting on social media, after a major kerfuffle in recent days involving Trump’s co-director of the newly-created, non-governmental “Department of Government Efficiency,” which caused outrage among the MAGA base.

“We just won a Historic Landslide and Mandate from the American People,” Trump declared in posts on several social media platforms Tuesday morning. Political observers say Trump’s win, which was a plurality, not a majority of the popular vote, and was neither a landslide nor a mandate.

“Senate Democrats are organizing to improperly stall and delay the confirmation process of many of our Great Nominees,” he claimed. “They will try all sorts of tricks starting very soon. Republicans must not allow them to do that. We have a Country to run, and many big problems to solve, mostly created by Democrats. REPUBLICANS, BE SMART AND TOUGH!!!”

Trump, who “campaigned relentlessly on grocery prices,” according to ABC News, in recent days appears to have been largely focused on threatening Panama that the United States, under his direction, wants to take back the Panama Canal, and threatening Canada that the United States would like to annex that sovereign nation as the 51st state. Also, Trump has again been claiming the United States needs “ownership and control” of Greenland, which is a territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.

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Trump’s New Year’s Eve declaration comes on the heels of reports Susie Wiles, his campaign manager who will serve as Chief of Staff, directed that “all intended nominees should refrain from any public social media posts without prior approval of the incoming White House counsel,” according to The New York Post.

“While this instruction has been delivered previously, I am reiterating that no member of the incoming administration or Transition speaks for the United States or the President-elect himself,” Wiles also reportedly wrote.

The Post claims that the “Wiles memo, according to a Trump transition source, is not in response to the recent social media ruckus caused by Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chairs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy over H-1B visas that had MAGA world spinning.”

Given Republicans will hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, it’s unclear what sparked Trump’s missive.

Several of his nominees have come under criticism and scrutiny, including nominees Pete Hegseth (Defense), Tulsi Gabbard (DNI), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (HHS), and Mehmet Oz (Medicare and Medicaid), among others. One, his first Attorney General nominee, Matt Gaetz, withdrew his nomination.

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