WASHINGTON – The Biden administration will announce a series of measures on Wednesday aimed at countering what it says are Russian-backed attempts to manipulate public opinion in the U.S. ahead of the November election, two senior officials told NBC News.

Some of the alleged manipulation occurred through RT, a Russia-backed media network, the sources said. Expected actions include Treasury Department sanctions and a Justice Department prosecution. Attorney General Merrick Garland is expected to speak publicly about the announcement Wednesday afternoon.

US intelligence agencies have previously suspected that Russia was trying to interfere in the 2024 elections. They described RT as a source of Russian propaganda and disinformation and called on the company to register as a foreign agent.

RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan “has close ties with senior Russian government officials” and has publicly stated that “the Russian government sets ratings and viewership requirements for RT and ‘since RT receives a budget from the state, it must fulfill the tasks assigned by the state,'” according to a 2017 ODNI report following Russia’s efforts in the 2016 election.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence explicitly stated in July that Russia was trying to influence the US election in order to undermine support for the Democratic presidential candidate and public support for the US arming Ukraine.

Several US investigators, including the team led by then-special investigator Robert Mueller, concluded that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election. The investigations revealed that the efforts were aimed at helping Donald Trump win the election against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

In February, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the Biden administration had “concerns” about possible Russian interference in the 2024 election cycle.

“This is not about politics,” Sullivan said. “This is about national security. This is about a foreign country, a foreign adversary, trying to manipulate the politics and democracy of the United States of America.”

NBC News reported the same month that U.S. officials and cyber experts said Russia was already using bots and fake online accounts to spread disinformation to harm President Joe Biden and other Democratic candidates during his re-election campaign.

Russian media also contributed to the spread of misinformation about the 2020 election, but their influence was eclipsed by former President Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election itself.

Trump attempted to undermine the 2020 election through false claims of mass voter fraud, an effort that culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

“Nothing Russia, Iran or China could say is anywhere near as crazy as what the president is saying,” Clint Watts, a former FBI agent who tracks foreign disinformation, told NBC News in 2020. “We can’t say this time that Russia, Iran or China intervened in any significant way. They don’t have to write fake news this time – we’re doing a lot of fake news ourselves.”

Shortly after the 2020 election, it was clear that Trump’s claims were false and that he had lost to President Joe Biden. But Trump – now the Republican nominee for the 2024 election – has still not admitted defeat, even though many of the Jan. 6 defendants told the courts they regretted being gullible enough to fall for Trump’s false claims.

Trump faces four federal crimes charges specifically related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. A federal grand jury has returned an indictment alleging that Trump knowingly lied about the 2020 election by spreading claims that were “baseless, objectively unreasonable and constantly changing.” Trump has indicated that his lawyers will enter a not guilty plea on his behalf at a hearing on the case on Thursday.