In the Oval Office interview, Mr. Thiessen asked whether Mr. Trump had launched the attack that shut down the Internet Research Agency, a troll farm in St. Petersburg, Russia, that was behind much of the 2016 election influence campaign that ran on Facebook and other social media sites.
“Correct,’’ Mr. Trump said, but he added no other details.
The move against the Internet Research Agency, though classified, has been widely reported over the past two years.
While not especially sophisticated — United States Cyber Command knocked the group offline for a few days around the 2018 midterm elections — it is often cited as a prime example of American cyberwarfare making use of new leeway to take limited offensive actions under a presidential order that Mr. Trump signed in August of that year.
