WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Thursday declassified intelligence data that he said showed Chinese interference in the US election, reviving his long-running attacks on election security despite a US intelligence assessment that found no evidence that Beijing tampered with the 2020 election it lost.
The 25-minute speech underscored Trump’s effort to make election security a central political 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 pressured his Republican colleagues in Congress to pass legislation imposing new voter identification and citizenship requirements, even though voter fraud in U.S. elections has long been found to be rare.
The president said he was declassifying sensitive information showing that China had illicitly acquired 220 million American 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.
Their allegations contradict an unclassified 2021 US intelligence community assessment that found no indication that any foreign actor attempted or succeeded in altering “any technical aspect” of voting in the 2020 presidential election, including voter records, ballots, tabulations or results.
The assessment was conducted under the direction of John Ratcliffe, then Trump’s director of national intelligence and now director of the CIA.
Ahead of Trump’s speech, some White House officials expressed concern that revealing 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 relations.
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 United States presidential election.”
Trump has been raising doubts about the election results for years, falsely claiming that his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden was rigged. He has also made other false claims, including that voting by mail is rife with fraud, that voting machines are vulnerable and that voting among noncitizens is widespread.
Numerous courts and vote recounts 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 seemed to show the opposite, or were not related to American electoral infrastructure at all. A CIA document, prepared last month, referred to the Venezuelan elections, not the United States.
“We assessed that vote tabulation systems would be difficult to manipulate on a scale large enough to compromise election results,” another document said.
A third document, prepared by the CIA, detailed efforts by Chinese spies to attack Biden’s campaign and noted that Beijing “does not currently intend to covertly interfere to try to influence the outcome of the election,” although it said China could decide to do so later.
“Trump’s shocking ‘bombshells’ about China are completely false,” Democratic Senator Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. “The fact is that our intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that China did not even attempt to change a single vote in the 2020 election.”
Family claims
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 leaders 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 American television networks and CNN decided not to broadcast the speech in prime time on their main platforms, departing from a practice typically reserved for major speeches 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 resides in state governments under the U.S. Constitution.
In recent months, he has also pushed Senate Republicans to advance a bill, the SAVE America Act, that would require a 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 the issues that matter most to Americans, including high costs of living, rather than focusing on the 2020 vote.
“I don’t know what he’s going to say,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said when asked Wednesday whether he would advise Trump to avoid talking about the 2020 election. “The only thing I can tell you is that we are focused on the 2026 election, at least I am, and I think most of my colleagues are.”
Republicans are facing political headwinds as the midterm elections approach, with Trump’s approval rating underwater and voters deeply frustrated by the Iran war and the high energy prices that accompany it.
Democrats only need to gain three Republican seats to gain a majority in the US House of Representatives. However, they face an uphill battle to win the Senate majority as critical races unfold 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 elections fairly,” he said. “So we don’t let them pass up the opportunity to try everything they can.”
