President Donald Trump used a primetime address to the nation on Thursday to announce the declassification of intelligence documents that he said prove Chinese interference in the 2020 US presidential election, once again raising questions about election security despite previous US intelligence assessments that found no evidence Beijing changed the outcome of the vote.
The 25-minute speech highlighted Trump’s effort to make election integrity a major political issue ahead of the November midterm elections, when Republicans will attempt to defend their majorities in Congress. The president argued that the released material showed serious weaknesses in the US electoral system and said the information would reveal what he described as “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure.”
Trump claimed that China had illegally obtained data from around 220 million US voter records, including names, addresses and other registration-related information. He accused members of the intelligence community of hiding the extent of Beijing’s activities and said he had ordered federal agencies to investigate how the alleged information was handled.
“Over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People’s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history,” Trump said during the address.
