WASHINGTON: U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday declassified intelligence that he said showed Chinese interference in the U.S. election, reviving his long-running attacks on election security despite a U.S. intelligence assessment that found no evidence Beijing altered the 2020 vote it lost.
The 25-minute speech highlighted Trump’s efforts 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 pressed his fellow Republicans in Congress to pass legislation imposing new voter ID and citizenship requirements, despite long-held findings that voter fraud in U.S. elections is rare.
The president said he was declassifying sensitive information showing that China had illegally acquired 220 million U.S. voter records, including names, addresses and other data used to register to vote.
He claimed that members of the U.S. intelligence community deliberately suppressed information about the extent of Chinese activities.
His allegations contradict a 2021 unclassified U.S. intelligence community assessment, which found no indication that a foreign actor attempted or succeeded in altering “any technical aspect” of voting for the 2020 presidential election, including voter registration, 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 disclosing information about China could be misleading, sources told Reuters.
Trump’s tough language on China risks upending a relationship that stabilized after last year’s costly trade war. Trump hopes to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in September to discuss improving trade relations.
Before Trump began speaking, a Chinese embassy spokesperson, Liu Chang, said in response to a request for comment: “China has never and will never interfere in the US presidential elections.”
Trump has spent years raising doubts about the election results, falsely claiming his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden was rigged. He has also made other false claims, including that mail-in voting is riddled with fraud, that voting machines are vulnerable, and that non-citizen voting is widespread.
Numerous courts and vote recounts have found no evidence of widespread 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 otherwise, or were not related to America’s election infrastructure at all. A CIA document prepared last month concerned elections in Venezuela, not those in the United States.
“We believe that vote tabulation systems would be difficult to manipulate on a large enough scale to compromise election results,” another document states.
A third document – produced by the CIA – details efforts by Chinese spies to target Biden’s campaign and notes that Beijing “does not currently intend to intervene covertly to attempt to influence the outcome of the election”, although it indicates that China could decide to do so at a later date.
“Trump’s shocking ‘bombs’ on China are completely false,” Democratic Sen. 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.”
Familiar statements
Earlier Thursday, Democratic members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence sent a letter to Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte, as well as the 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 U.S. television networks and CNN decided not to air the speech in prime time on their major platforms, departing from a practice typically reserved for major conferences on issues of national importance.
Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump has sought to expand federal power over election administration, which is legally the responsibility of state governments under the U.S. Constitution.
In recent months, he has also pressed 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 also 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 the high cost of living, rather than 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 face political headwinds heading into the midterm elections, with Trump’s approval ratings falling and voters deeply frustrated by the war in Iran and resulting high energy prices.
Democrats need just three Republican seats to gain a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. They face an uphill battle to secure a majority in the Senate, however, with critical races taking place in Republican-leaning states.
Democrats are bracing for the White House to attempt to manipulate the November election, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Wednesday.
“They know they can’t win a fair and square election,” he said. “So we don’t let it get away from them trying everything they can.”
