US President Donald Trump has released declassified intelligence that he says points to Chinese interference in American elections, breathing new life into his years-long campaign over election security despite a US intelligence assessment finding no evidence that Beijing altered the 2020 vote he lost.
During the 25-minute address, Mr Trump sought to place election security at the heart of the political debate before November’s midterm elections, when Republicans will defend their congressional majorities amid the threat of losing one or both chambers.
Mr Trump has urged Republican lawmakers to approve legislation establishing new voter identification and citizenship requirements, even though official findings have long shown that fraud in US elections is rare.
The president said he was declassifying sensitive material indicating that China had illegally obtained 220 million US voter records, including names, addresses and other information used in voter registration.
Those accusations run counter to an unclassified 2021 assessment by the US intelligence community, which found no sign that any foreign actor had attempted or managed to change “any technical aspect” of the 2020 presidential vote, including registrations, ballots, tabulations or results.
That review was carried out under John Ratcliffe, who served at the time as Mr Trump’s director of national intelligence and is now his CIA director.
China rejected the president’s claims, accusing him of spreading “fabrications” and “malicious smears”.
“The relevant claims made by the US side are pure fabrications and malicious smears that have long since been proven to be groundless statements,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said.
Some White House officials raised concerns before the address that releasing the information about China could create a misleading impression, sources told Reuters.
Mr Trump’s forceful rhetoric also threatened to unsettle a relationship that had stabilised after last year’s expensive trade war. He hopes to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in September for talks aimed at improving trade relations.
Before the speech began, Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Chang responded to a request for comment by saying: “China has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the US”.
Trump says declassified material exposes ‘shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure’
Mr Trump has spent years casting suspicion on election results, falsely claiming that his 2020 defeat by Democrat Joe Biden was rigged. He has promoted other unfounded assertions, including that postal voting is riddled with fraud, voting machines are insecure and non-citizen voting is common.
Repeated court challenges and vote recounts uncovered no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 contest.
Mr Trump also said the newly released material would expose “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure”.
Many of the documents, however, appeared to undercut that claim or had no connection to US election systems. A CIA document prepared last month dealt with Venezuela’s election rather than an American vote.
“We assess that vote tabulation systems would be difficult to manipulate on a wide enough scale to compromise election results,” another document said.
A third document, produced by the CIA, described attempts by Chinese intelligence operatives to target Mr Biden’s campaign. It stated that Beijing “does not currently intend to covertly interfere to try to sway the outcome of the election”, while adding that China could later change course.
“Trump’s shocking ‘bombshells’ about China are totally bogus,” Democratic Senator Mark Warner, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. “The fact is our intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that China did not even try to change a single vote in the 2020 election.”
Donald Trump delivered the address from the White House’s East Room
Renewed arguments
Earlier yesterday, Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence wrote to acting director of national intelligence Bill Pulte and the heads of the FBI, Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, cautioning them against allowing Mr Trump to “weaponise intelligence to support false claims about election security.”
Two of the three leading US television networks, along with CNN, declined to carry the prime-time speech on their main platforms, breaking with a convention generally reserved for major presidential addresses on matters of national importance.
Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Mr Trump has pushed to broaden federal authority over election administration, a responsibility that rests legally with state governments under the US Constitution.
He has also spent recent months pressing Senate Republicans to move forward with the SAVE America Act. The bill would require voters to show photo ID and provide proof of US citizenship when registering, while compelling states to share voter registration data with the federal government. Democrats and voting-rights campaigners say fraud is exceedingly rare and warn that the measure would prevent eligible voters from casting ballots.
Some Republican leaders have encouraged Mr Trump to turn his attention away from the 2020 election and towards concerns that weigh most heavily on Americans, including the high cost of living.
“I don’t know what he’s going to say,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said when asked on Wednesday whether he would urge Mr Trump not to revisit the 2020 election. “The only thing I can tell you is, we are focused on the 2026 election, at least I am, and I think most of my colleagues are.”
Republicans face an increasingly difficult political climate ahead of the midterms, with Mr Trump’s approval rating low and voters expressing deep frustration over the Iran war and the resulting surge in energy prices.
Democrats need to gain just three Republican-held seats to secure control of the US House of Representatives. Capturing the Senate will be more difficult, however, as pivotal contests are taking place in states that lean Republican.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer told reporters on Wednesday that his party was preparing for the possibility that the White House could try to manipulate November’s election.
“They know they can’t win the election fair and square,” he said. “So we don’t put it past them to try whatever they can.”
