President Donald Trump in his primetime speech on Thursday is alleging vulnerabilities exist in American election systems, using a large trove of newly declassified documents as evidence to suggest future elections could be at risk of foreign interference, particularly by China.
Though the documents are newly declassified, they largely discuss vulnerabilities that have been known for years and election officials around the country have tried to address.
None of the declassified information supports the claim that any previous election results — including the 2020 presidential contest that Trump lost — were manipulated by foreign interference or fraud in a way that would’ve changed the outcome.
Instead, White House officials have framed the disclosures not as an attempt to re-litigate past elections, but rather as an attempt to correct vulnerabilities ahead of November’s midterm elections. That’s despite the fact that the second Trump administration has shuttered many federal organizations that were tracking and publicizing foreign influence campaigns.
And White House officials suggested the information, some of which has been known for years, was withheld from senior top elected US officials, including Trump, for political purposes.
