Trump accuses China of 2020 voting interference, contradicting US intelligence findings

WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump declassified intelligence on July 16 that he said showed Chinese interference in US elections, reviving his long-running attacks on election security despite a US intelligence assessment that found no evidence Beijing altered the 2020 vote which he lost.

The 25-minute address underscored Trump’s effort to make election security a central political issue ahead of November’s midterm elections, when Republicans will be defending their congressional majorities and face the possibility of losing control of one or both chambers.

Trump has pressed his fellow Republicans in Congress to pass legislation imposing new voter identification and citizenship requirements, despite longstanding findings that voter fraud in US elections is rare.

The president said he was declassifying sensitive information that showed China had illicitly acquired 220 million US voter files, including names, addresses and other data used to register to vote.

He asserted that members of the US intelligence community deliberately suppressed information about the extent of China’s activities.

His allegations contradict an unclassified 2021 US intelligence community assessment that found no indications any foreign actor attempted to alter or succeeded in altering “any technical aspect” of the 2020 presidential election vote, including voter registrations, ballots, tabulations or results.

The assessment was conducted under John Ratcliffe, then Trump’s director of national intelligence and now his CIA director.

Ahead of Trump’s speech, some White House officials expressed concern that disclosing the China information could be misleading, sources told Reuters.

Trump’s harsh language about China risked rocking a relationship that has steadied following a costly trade war in 2025. Trump hopes to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in September about improving trade relations.

Before Trump began speaking, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy, Liu Chang, said in response to a request for comment, “China has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the U.S.”

Trump has spent years raising doubts about electoral outcomes, falsely asserting that his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden was rigged. He has also advanced other false claims, including that mail-in balloting is rife with fraud, voting machines are vulnerable and non-citizen voting is widespread.

Numerous courts and vote recounts found no evidence of large-scale fraud in the 2020 election.

Trump also said he was declassifying data that would reveal “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure”.

But many of the documents appeared to show the opposite, or were not related to US election infrastructure at all. One CIA document, prepared in June, concerned Venezuela’s election, not America’s.

“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 – detailed efforts by Chinese spies to target Biden’s campaign and noted that Beijing “does not currently intend to covertly interfere to try to sway the outcome of the election”, although it said China might later decide to do so.

“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.”

Familiar claims

Earlier on July 16, Democratic members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence sent a letter to the acting director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte, along with the leaders of the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, warning them not to allow Trump to “weaponise intelligence to support false claims about election security”.

Two of the three major US television networks and CNN decided not to broadcast the prime-time address on their primary platforms, departing from a practice typically reserved for major addresses on issues of national import.

Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump has sought to expand federal power over the administration of elections, which legally resides with state governments under the US Constitution.

In recent months, he has also pressured Senate Republicans to advance a Bill, the SAVE America Act, that would require photo ID to vote and proof of US citizenship to register while also mandating that states share voter registration information with the federal government. Democrats and voting-rights advocates say that voter fraud is exceedingly rare and argue the legislation would suppress legitimate votes.

Some Republican leaders have urged Trump to focus on issues that matter most to Americans, including high living costs, rather than focus on the 2020 vote.

“I don’t know what he’s going to say,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said when asked on July 15 whether he would advise Trump to avoid talking about 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 are navigating political headwinds as the midterm elections approach, with Trump’s approval rating underwater and voters deeply frustrated by the Iran war and attendant high energy prices.

Democrats need to flip only three Republican seats to take a majority in the US House of Representatives. They face an uphill battle to win a Senate majority, however, with critical races unfolding in Republican-leaning states.

Democrats are preparing for the White House to attempt to manipulate November’s election, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer told reporters on July 15.

“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.” REUTERS