Trump cites potential hack of US elections in speech slammed for stoking voter fears

The nation’s election infrastructure is vulnerable to cyberattacks by foreign actors, President Donald Trump said during a primetime address Thursday night, citing a batch of documents he declassified — but providing no proof broad interference actually occurred or affected an election outcome.

Democrats and advocates quickly criticized the remarks as another attempt by Trump to give Republicans an advantage in crucial midterm elections and sow distrust of results, following his firing of

Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and some non-state groups “have the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure,” Trump said, quoting one of the documents, which were compiled by White House and intelligence community staff. The document said its authors did not know if any adversaries planned to interfere in elections.

Trump claimed that voter rolls in at least 18 states were “bought, stolen, or hacked by China” ahead of the 2020 election. The attempted methods of interference, he said, ranged from influencing voters to trying to produce fake ballots in favor of Democratic nominee Joe Biden.  

Standing behind a lectern at the White House, Trump said during the 2020 election, the People’s Republic of China carried out the “largest compromise of election data in history,” and said varyingly that China had illicitly accessed tens of millions or up to 220 million voters’ personal data. 

“Our purpose in disclosing this information is not to weaken confidence in (elections), but to earn that confidence by confronting vulnerabilities and correcting them very, very quickly,” he said. “And that’s what we’re doing.”

Trump announced he was immediately declassifying five sets of documents that he said proved foreign interference in the election and 2018 midterms, as well as “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure.” 

“Just as disturbingly, this vital information has, for many years, been covered up and hidden from you, the American people,” he said.

He claimed that the election vulnerabilities were known by members of the “deep state” who included top members of the intelligence community and worked to hide “the extent of China’s sinister election meddling,” including while he was president prior to and during the 2020 election. 

He further accused Biden’s Department of Justice of killing any investigation into the matter and preventing its disclosure. 

The documents were posted on a whitehouse.gov webpage Thursday evening.

Trump also said the vulnerabilities were another reason to pass the SAVE America Act, a bill that in its various versions would restrict voter access by adding requirements to register and cast ballots, including photo IDs. The bill, which is stalled in the U.S. Senate, does not include funding for election security infrastructure. 

Midterms impact

Many Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, said the remarks were not about the 2020 cycle, but were ultimately meant to undermine confidence ahead of this year’s midterms.

“Trump knows he has lost American families,” Schumer said in a statement following the address. “He knows he has made their lives more expensive, endangered their friends & families with an unnecessary war, and embarrassed the country on the global stage. And rather than pivot his policies, he is working to rig the midterms before a single vote has even been cast. We won’t let him.”

Former vice president and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris wrote shortly before Trump’s speech that he wanted the American people to believe their vote does not matter. 

“He wants you to lose confidence in our electoral system so you stay home this November,” she wrote on X. “He knows how discontent the American people are, and he wants to make sure that you do not vote.” 

Election forecasters say the most likely result of the midterms is that the GOP retains control of the U.S. Senate and Democrats gain a majority in the House.

Chinese meddling attempts

During his roughly 25-minute-long remarks, Trump avoided explicitly repeating his debunked claims the 2020 election was rigged, only implying it at one point.

“We’re taking swift action to ensure that sensitive voter data is better protected so we can never be bought, we can never be hacked, and we can never watch a stolen election again,” he said.

Instead, Trump said the documents showed U.S. elections are “vulnerable to being rigged and stolen.”

He said China did try to meddle with voter registration and influenced public opinion against him by paying U.S. journalists “large sums of money to write more negative articles about him.” He did not say that was the reason he lost the election and he did not identify the journalists.

According to the Election Assistance Commission, voter rolls are sometimes commercially available and are often obtainable through public records requests. 

Trump said another set of documents revealed a scheme by a get-out-the-vote group in Muskegon, Michigan, to file fraudulent voter registrations. He did not say the scheme, which has been discredited, affected any votes counted in Michigan’s 2020 election.

In a statement, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, said the state’s elections “are safe and secure.”

“Any suggestion otherwise is designed to undermine our voters’ basic rights,” she said.

Trump also claimed that 278,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in the U.S., citing a Department of Homeland Security report released shortly before his speech. That figure may be higher, he claimed, because Democratic-led states have not shared their voter information. 

The White House documents released Thursday link to a one-page document created by the department, which cites a “review” of voter information in four states: California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada. It does not reference any specific data. 

Throughout his speech, Trump took aim at the media, including NBC News and ABC News, which had both said they would not broadcast his speech live. CBS ultimately broadcast a portion of his speech in a special report after it began. 

2020 claims

Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election began almost immediately after his loss. 

Trump and his allies filed dozens of lawsuits challenging the results of the election, nearly all of which were dropped or thrown out for lack of evidence. 

The post-election campaign culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by Trump’s supporters on the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to disrupt Congress’ certification of Electoral College results. A U.S. House committee investigating the attack concluded Trump was responsible for inciting it by knowingly lying to his supporters about the election results. 

The investigation also found Trump sought to use Department of Justice resources and his influence among state-level Republicans to reverse the results.

Trump also faced a federal indictment for his conduct leading up to the riot. That prosecution was dropped when he won the 2024 election. After returning to office last year, Trump also pardoned everyone convicted of charges related to the attack.

Dems push back: ‘totally bogus’ 

Immediately after Trump’s remarks, Democrats slammed the president’s claims about China’s election interference. 

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said in a post on X that the “shocking ‘bombshells’ about China are totally bogus.” 

“The fact is our intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that China did not even try to change a single vote in the 2020 election,” he wrote. “A single concurring opinion suggested China may have tried to sway voters’ opinions… but that’s been public knowledge since 2021.”

During his speech, Trump, without evidence, cast doubt on the integrity of the Los Angeles mayoral race and the state’s recent gubernatorial race. 

California’s primary election was Tuesday, June 2, but election officials are allowed to take roughly a month to complete vote counting. The lengthy process is a product of the state’s large population, as well as its reliance on voting by mail. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom echoed other Democratic officials and said the speech, which he described as “the ramblings of a mad king,” was about the midterms. 

“Before a single vote has been cast, he’s already laying the groundwork to rig this election and convince YOU not to trust the results if they don’t go his way,” he said. “Don’t fall for it.”