US President Donald Trump has declassified documents he claims show Chinese interference in the US election, reviving his long-standing attacks on the security of the electoral process, despite an assessment by US intelligence agencies that there is no evidence that Beijing influenced the 2020 election, which Trump lost.
The 25-minute prime-time address highlighted Trump's efforts to make election security a top political issue ahead of the November midterm elections, when his Republican colleagues will defend their narrow majority in Congress, Reuters reports.
Trump also used the speech to once again urge Republicans in Congress to pass legislation that would introduce new voter identification and citizenship requirements, despite long-standing findings that voter fraud is rare in the United States. The bill has stalled in the Senate due to strong opposition from Democrats.
Trump claims there are "shocking vulnerabilities"
Trump said the declassified material would reveal "shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure." However, many of the documents appear to show the opposite or have no connection to the US election infrastructure at all.
The speech came at a politically challenging time for Trump and Republicans, with his support weighed down by an unpopular war in Iran and high energy prices. Trump briefly mentioned the war at the beginning, saying the US was "winning decisively", and then listed a series of domestic achievements, including tax cuts and toughening immigration policies, before moving on to election security.
Trump said he was declassifying sensitive information showing that China illegally obtained data on 220 million American voters, including names, addresses and other information.
He claimed that members of the US intelligence community deliberately concealed information about the extent of Chinese activities.
An unclassified 2021 US intelligence assessment stated that there was no indication that any foreign actor attempted or succeeded in altering "any technical aspect" of voting in the 2020 presidential election, including voter rolls, ballots, vote counting or results, Reuters reports.
The assessment was conducted when John Ratcliffe was Trump's director of national intelligence. Ratcliffe is now the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA.
The report also stated that since at least 2008, China has been trying to collect information about American voters, public opinion, political parties, candidates and top government officials, likely with the aim of using that material to predict election results.
Two people familiar with the matter said that the data on American voters obtained by China was not confidential - voter rolls are regularly purchased by political consultants - and that it could not have been manipulated.
Ahead of Trump's speech, some White House officials expressed concerns that releasing information about China could mislead the public, sources told Reuters.
Trump's harsh rhetoric toward China could shake up relations that had stabilized after last year's costly trade war. Trump hopes to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in September to discuss improving trade relations.
China's Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment on the speech. Before the speech, Liu Chang, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said: "China has never interfered and will never interfere in the US presidential election."
Famous claims that have been repeated for years
Trump has been questioning the election results for years, falsely claiming that his defeat by Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 was the result of election fraud. He has also made other false claims, including that mail-in voting is riddled with fraud, that voting machines are unreliable, and that non-citizen voting is widespread.
Numerous courts and vote recounts have found no evidence of large-scale fraud in the 2020 elections.
Still, Trump's campaign has found support among his supporters. A Reuters/Ipsos poll in April found that 63 percent of Republicans believe Trump's claim that the 2020 election was stolen. That share has remained largely unchanged in recent years, despite the lack of evidence.
Trump said on Thursday that his administration had uncovered evidence that more than 275.000 non-citizens were registered to vote in just four states, but it was unclear how many actually voted.
In some previous cases, citizenship verification systems have mistakenly labeled some naturalized US citizens as stateless. Research has shown that cases in which noncitizens actually vote are extremely rare.
Trump, Reuters reports, also said that the newly declassified documents would reveal serious weaknesses in election security. However, many of them appear to contradict that claim or have no connection to the US election infrastructure:
One CIA document, prepared last month, referred to elections in Venezuela, not the US.
"We estimate that vote counting systems would be difficult to manipulate on a large enough scale to jeopardize election results," another document said.
A third document, produced by the CIA, detailed attempts by Chinese spies to target the Biden campaign. It said Beijing "does not currently intend to covertly interfere to try to influence the outcome of the election," although it added that China could make such a decision later.
"Trump's alleged shocking 'bombshells' about China are completely false," Democratic Senator Mark Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement released during the speech. "The fact is that our intelligence agencies unanimously agree that China did not attempt to change a single vote in the 2020 election."
Political obstacles
Although Trump has portrayed the US election as highly vulnerable, he has not offered evidence that any vote in the 2020 election was actually changed or manipulated.
Two of the three largest American television networks, as well as CNN, decided not to broadcast the speech on their main channels, departing from a practice usually reserved for major addresses on issues of national importance.
Trump has again urged Republican lawmakers to support a bill called the SAVE America Act, which would require photo identification to vote, proof of U.S. citizenship to register, and significantly limit mail-in voting. Democrats and voting rights groups say the bill is aimed at preventing eligible voters from casting their ballots.
The proposal has passed several times by simple majority in the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives, but in the Senate, which is also controlled by Republicans, it lacks the necessary 60 votes to overcome Democratic obstruction.
Some Republican leaders have urged Trump to focus on the issues that matter most to Americans, including the high cost of living, instead of the 2020 election.
Democrats need to win just three seats currently held by Republicans to gain a majority in the 435-seat U.S. House of Representatives. However, they face a much tougher fight for control of the 100-seat Senate, as key races are held in Republican-leaning states.
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