Sunday from Austria’s Interalpen Hotel, press secretary Josh Earnest said that if the evidence shows China is behind the massive federal data breach last April, in which hackers acquired the  private information of 4 million federal employees, the Untied States imposing financial sanctions in response is “certainly possible.”

Earnest said, “The option that the the president put on the table for responding to these kind of activities in the form of financial sanctions certainly is one that  continues to be available to him and the administration in regards to this particular activity.”

“It certainly is possible that this new tool, financial sanctions,  could be used to respond to this incident,” he added.

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