WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Thursday declassified intelligence that he said showed Chinese meddling in US elections, reviving his long-running attack on election security despite a US intelligence assessment that found no evidence Beijing rigged the 2020 vote he lost.
The 25-minute speech underscored Trump’s efforts to make election security a central policy issue ahead of November’s midterm elections, when Republicans will defend their congressional majorities and face the possibility of losing control of one or both chambers.
Trump has pushed his fellow Republicans in Congress to pass legislation imposing new voter identification and citizenship requirements, despite longstanding findings that voter fraud in US elections is rare.
The president said he declassified sensitive information that showed China had illegally acquired 220 million US voter files, including names, addresses and other data used to register to vote.
He claimed that members of the US intelligence community deliberately suppressed information about the extent of China’s activities.
His claims contradict an unclassified 2021 U.S. intelligence assessment that found no evidence that any foreign actor attempted or succeeded in altering “any technical aspect” of the 2020 presidential election, including voter registrations, polls, tabulations or results.
The assessment was made under John Ratcliffe, then Trump’s director of national intelligence and now his CIA director.
Ahead of Trump’s speech, some White House officials expressed concern that disclosure of information about China could be misleading, sources told Reuters.
Trump’s tough language on China risked shaking a relationship that has stabilized after last year’s costly trade war. Trump hopes to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in September to improve trade ties.
Before Trump began speaking, a Chinese embassy spokesman, Liu Chang, said in response to a request for comment: “China has never and will never interfere in the presidential election of the United States.”
Trump has spent years casting doubt on election results and falsely claiming his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden was rigged. He has also made other false claims, including that postal voting is rife with fraud, voting machines are vulnerable, and absentee voting is widespread.
Numerous courts and vote counts found no evidence of large-scale fraud in the 2020 election.
Trump also said he was declassifying data that would reveal “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure.”
But many of the documents appeared to show the opposite, or were unrelated to US election infrastructure at all. A CIA document produced last month concerned Venezuela’s election, not the United States’.
“We assess that vote tabulation systems would be difficult to manipulate on a broad enough scale to compromise election results,” another document said.
A third document — produced by the CIA — detailed efforts by Chinese spies to target Biden’s campaign, noting that Beijing “does not currently intend to covertly interfere to try to influence the outcome of the election,” although it said China could later decide to do so.
“Trump’s shocking ‘bombshells’ about China are completely false,” Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. “In fact, our intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that China did not even try to change a single vote in the 2020 election.”
Known allegations
Earlier Thursday, Democratic members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence sent a letter to Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte, along with the heads of the FBI, Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, warning them not to allow Trump to “weaponize intelligence to support false claims about election security.”
Two of the three major US television networks and CNN decided not to air the primetime address on their primary platforms, departing from a practice typically reserved for major addresses on issues of national importance.
Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump has sought to expand federal power over the administration of elections, which legally rests with state governments under the U.S. Constitution.
In recent months, he has also pushed Senate Republicans to introduce a bill, the SAVE America Act, that would require photo ID to vote and proof of U.S. citizenship to register, while requiring states to share voter registration information with the federal government. Democrats and voting rights advocates say voter fraud is extremely rare and argue the legislation would suppress legitimate votes.
Some Republican leaders have urged Trump to focus on issues that matter most to Americans, including the high cost of living, instead of focusing on the 2020 vote.
“I don’t know what he’s going to say,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said when asked Wednesday if he would advise Trump to avoid talking about the 2020 election. “All I can tell you is that we’re focused on the 2026 election, at least I am and I think most of my colleagues are.”
Republicans are navigating political headwinds as the midterm elections approach, with Trump’s approval rating sinking and voters deeply frustrated by the Iran war and resulting high energy prices.
Democrats need to flip only three Republican seats to gain a majority in the US House of Representatives. However, they face an uphill battle to win a majority in the Senate, where critical races are playing out in Republican-leaning states.
Democrats are preparing for the White House to try to rig the November election, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Wednesday.
“They know they can’t win the election fairly,” he said. “So we don’t put it past them to try what they can.”
