Trump claims China interference despite intel finding no evidence
Photo: REUTERS
US President Donald Trump declassified several documents on Thursday, asserting they prove Chinese interference in American elections.
During a 25-minute prime-time speech, he revived his long-standing attacks on election security, despite a previous US intelligence assessment that found no evidence Beijing influenced the 2020 vote.
The address highlights Trump’s strategy to prioritize election security as a central political issue before the November midterm elections. Republicans are defending narrow congressional majorities while facing political pressure from high energy prices and the unpopular Iran war.
Trump briefly said the US is “winning big” in the war before shifting his focus to election infrastructure.
Trump claimed that the newly released material would reveal “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure”. He asserted that China illicitly obtained 220 million US voter files, including names and addresses, and accused the US intelligence community of intentionally suppressing this information.
However, a 2021 unclassified intelligence assessment - conducted under John Ratcliffe, Trump’s then-director of national intelligence - found no indications that any foreign actor successfully altered any technical aspect of the 2020 vote.
Sources familiar with the matter noted that the voter data China obtained is not confidential, as political consultants routinely purchase such files. Liu Chang, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, added before the address, “China has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the US.”
The declassified documents themselves often appeared to contradict Trump’s assertions. For instance:
- One CIA document concerned an election in Venezuela, not the United States.
- Another document said, “We assess that vote tabulation systems would be difficult to manipulate on a wide enough scale to compromise election results.”
- A third CIA report noted that while Chinese spies targeted the Biden campaign, the country “does not currently intend to covertly interfere to try to sway the outcome of the election.”
Democratic Senator Mark Warner, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released a statement during the speech calling the claims baseless.
He said, “Trump’s shocking ‘bombshells’ about China are totally bogus. The fact is our intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that China did not even try to change a single vote in the 2020 election.”
Trump also used the platform to urge Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require photo ID and proof of citizenship for voters while limiting mail-in balloting.
While numerous courts and recounts found no evidence of large-scale fraud in 2020, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 63 percent of Republicans still believe Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
Major television networks, including CNN, chose not to broadcast the address on their primary platforms. Some Republican leaders have urged Trump to pivot his focus toward living costs rather than the 2020 election results as the midterms approach.
Source: Reuters (adapted)
