Sanger: ‘A Good Deal’ of the Sanctions Are to ‘Box in’ Trump

SANGER: "The big question here, I think, is what does President Obama hope to accomplish by this. Can he actually deter future Russian action? And how does he box in President-elect Trump? Because that’s what a good deal of this is. You have in President-elect Trump somebody who has been consistently skeptical of the Russians, even got involved, talked about 400-pound hackers doing this from their beds in New Jersey and so forth. And so by trying to lay out some evidence, expelling people and doing the sanctions, he’s now put the President-elect in the position of having to decide whether to go actually reverse this stuff. Say to Vladimir Putin, 'Ah, forget about it,' soon after he comes into office. I’m betting that the President-elect doesn’t do that. You already saw him seem to back away a little bit by saying, 'I’ll take an intelligence briefing on this subject next week.'"