Russia banned former President Barack Obama, along with around 500 other Americans, from entering the country on Friday. The move comes on the heels of the Durham Report’s release, which revealed Obama knew the Trump-Russia collusion story was a hoax.
The Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry announced the ban on Friday, saying it was triggered by the Biden administration’s “anti-Russian sanctions.”
“In response to the regularly imposed anti-Russian sanctions by the Biden administration, which, according to Washington’s plan, are designed to inflict maximum damage on Russia by personally affecting officials and ordinary citizens of our country, as a countermeasure, entry into the Russian Federation is closed for 500 Americans,” the statement read, according to a Google translation.
In addition to Obama, Russia also banned political commentator Rachel Maddow, late-night hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, New York Attorney General Letitia James and a number of U.S. lawmakers.
“It is high time for Washington to learn that not a single hostile attack against Russia will be left without a strong reaction,” the statement continued. “The principle of the inevitability of punishment will be consistently applied, whether we are talking about tougher sanctions pressure or discriminatory steps to hinder the professional activities of our fellow citizens.”
Special counsel John Durham’s report on a years-long investigation into the U.S. government’s response to the 2016 Trump-Russia collusion hoax was released earlier this week revealing that “neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion” between former President Donald Trump and Russia.
Durham’s report also noted that then-President Obama and other senior administration officials knew Hillary Clinton fabricated the Trump-Russia collusion story four months prior to the 2016 election.
“According to his handwritten notes, CIA Director [John] Brennan subsequently briefed President Obama and other senior national security officials on the intelligence, including the ‘alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services,’” the report stated.
