Trump Declassifies Intelligence Documents, Says China Hacked Voter Data for 220 Million Americans and ‘Deep State’ Covered It Up

President Trump is declassifying hundreds of documents that he says shows foreign governments made attempts to hack voter data and possibly interfere in the 2020 election, though the documents he has released show no evidence of voter fraud. Mr. Trump used his address to the nation on Thursday night to call for the passage of his SAVE America Act, a bill that would require voters to prove citizenship and show photo ID before voting. Mr. Trump has spent nearly six years claiming the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. Last month, he installed Bill Pulte — a loyalist and housing finance bureaucrat — as the acting Director of National Intelligence to look into “rigged elections.” Thursday’s address is a result of the intelligence community-wide probe into potential election issues back in 2020. Now, Mr. Trump says that foreign governments like the People’s Republic of China and Venezuela had accessed voter data and possibly had the ability to access electronic voting machines — and that the so-called “deep state” tried to keep that information from him before he left the White House in 2021.Speaking from the East Room of the White House late Thursday, Mr. Trump said he was declassifying five tranches of documents that he says show major vulnerabilities with America’s election infrastructure. The first issue he mentioned was an apparent breach of voter data by individuals in China ahead of the 2020 election, though the documents show no evidence of China’s government being directly involved in the plot. “America is back and doing really well, but we still have a major challenge that must be urgently addressed, because no country can be great without fair and honest elections,” Mr. Trump said Thursday. He said he would release documents showing that 220 million American voters had their information hacked by China, though the document itself does not prove government involvement. “Although we cannot directly tie this network to the Chinese Government, the [intelligence officers] assess that elements of thegovernment were, at a minimum, aware of and condoned the campaign, and may have directed or conducted it,” one of the intelligence assessments released by the White House states. “We base this assessment on the alignment of the content with Beijing’s overt messaging themes, its striking similarity to the themes and tactics of previous Chinese influence campaigns that seek to blend their influence operations into broader public discourse.”Mr. Trump further claimed that intelligence officers actively kept information about the Chinese hack under wraps, even from Mr. Trump himself during his first term. He says agents of the “deep state” wanted to hide any evidence of Chinese individuals or government agents having access to such information. The president says he is directing federal law endorsement and intelligence agencies to begin conducting reviews of the voter information hack with the 18 states that had their voter rolls accessed. Mr. Trump also released a January 2020 intelligence assessment that found that electronic voting machines could be “easily compromised” and that countries like Russia, North Korea, or China may try to access the machines before the 2020 election. Other documents posted by the White House detail how the American intelligence community believed that the Maduro regime had changed vote totals on electronic voting machines during the 2020 parliamentary election in Venezuela. There is no evidence that any country did so here in the United States, however. Mr. Trump also pointed to an FBI investigation in Michigan that began in the fall of 2020 before the election around a get-out-the-vote operation at Muskegon, Michigan. The documents released by the White House show that the attempts to fraudulently register voters before the election was caught by local police and later referred to the FBI, though federal prosecutors closed the case a year later after finding no evidence of fraud. At the end of his speech, Mr. Trump again called on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to show proof of citizenship and photo ID before voting. The bill that Mr. Trump wants would also severely restrict the use of mail ballots, with only veterans, the infirm, and some individuals who are traveling on election day being permitted to vote by mail. Mr. Trump announced that the secretary of homeland security, Markwayne Mullin, will hold a press conference on Friday morning to offer additional details about the declassified documents.

Trump Declassifies Intelligence Documents, Says China Hacked Voter Data for 220 Million Americans and ‘Deep State’ Covered It Up

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