Trump claims contradicted by review
President was briefed on China, election in 2018
By: Josy Meyer
USA Today
WASHINGTON - Among President Donald Trump's many assertions about U.S. elections in his July16 [2026] address, perhaps none was more alarming than his accusation that China carried out the "largest compromise of election data in history" through its "illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files.
..... Not true,
according to the documents the White House released alongside Trump's address.
..... The assertion that Beijing compromised the 2020 election was a centerpiece of the president's broader claim that China "fought like hell not to have a Donald Trump win" - and engineered his defeat by Democrat Joe Biden by leveraging "all domestic and foreign elements that were opposed to the U.S. president."
..... The information china acquired, Trump said, included names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences and other 'sensitive" data needed to register to vote.
.... "U.S. spy agencies began learning about the compromise of voter registration files in 2020, when they discovered that tens of millions of voter data - think of that, tens of millions of voters' data - in 18 states have been brought, stolen or hacked by China," Trump said. "Yet those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information secret and hidden."
.....
But the newly declassified U.S. intelligence records released by the White House to support Trump don't back up many of those assertions, according to a USA today review of the documents.
..... They indicate Beijing primarily sought to predict election outcomes and influence voters in the United States to be more pro-China as opposed to changing anyone's vote or somehow using their data to fraudulently vote.
.....
China "probably also continued longstanding efforts to gather information on US voters and public opinion; political parties, mandates and their staff; and senior government officials," according to one key classified intelligence community assessment provided to Trump, senior administration officials and congressional lawmakers on January 7, 2021. A declassified version of the assessment was publicly released in March 2021.
.....
"We assess Beijing probably sought to sue this information to predict election outcomes and to inform its efforts to influence US policy toward China under either election outcomes,: the assessment by the National Intelligence council said, "as it has during all election cycles since at least 2008 and considers an acceptable tool of statecraft."
..... The NIC went even further in contradicting Trump's statements: "We assess Beijing did not interfere with election infrastructure, including vote tabulation or the transmission of election results.
.....
On July 16, [2026] a spokesman for the
Chinese government, Liu Chang, told USA today that the "U.S. election is an internal mater of the U.S. Its outcome is determined by the voters of the American people, china has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the U.S."
..... The NIC assessment also contained a dissenting view from the National Intelligence Officer for Cyber - an analytical disagreement that Trump didn't mention specifically in his address.
..... And while it said China took at least some steps to undermine former President Trump's reelection chances, that was primarily done "through social media and official public statements and media."
..... The National Intelligence Officer for Cyber, the report said, agreed with the overall intelligence community view that Beijing "was primarily focused on countering anti-china policies" but believed that some of Beijing's influence efforts were intensed to at least indirectly affect U.S. candidates, political processes and voter preferences.
..... "The NIO agrees that we have no information suggesting China tried to interfere with election processes," the report concluded.
..... And while U.S. intelligence officials believe China might have accumulated millions of American voter records, it's likely that Beijing purchased at least some of them through commercially available means, according to elections experts and former U.S. officials who worked on election security.
..... "His own documents show much of that data came from public websites ... and that the Chinese apparently didn't do anything with it," said Miles Taylor, a former chief of staff in Trump's Department of Homeland Security during the first term. Taylor has since become an outspoken critic of Trump.
.....
..... A review of the declassified documents indicates that the data was largely lists of people who are registered to vote, there addresses and other basic information.
..... One of the declassified records, Taylor said, states that voters registration information was downloaded from "U.S. commercial websites," including data brokers who obtain and sell the data.
..... The same document, Taylor said, adds that the data form Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, Oklahoma and Rhode Island "was downloaded by a Chinese actor in 14 January 2022."
..... That's 14 months after Biden's victory, and thus could not have contributed to Trump's loss.
.....
Trump also alleged that "members of the deep state" worked agonist him by trying to downplay China's acquisition of the voter data, "covering it up from both the president and the American people."
..... But as Taylor noted, he and other senior U.S. officials briefed Trump on Chinese meddling as far back as 2018 - and he even confirmed that by speaking publicly about it.
..... "The documents the White House released are the briefings," Taylor said in his Substack post.
..... "They were produced by his own administration's analysts, during his own presidency, and delivered to his own White House."
..... "Even if the president didn't actually read them, his team did," Taylor said. "And I can personally attest that he was verbally briefed n the threats. Because I was one of the briefer."
..... Contributing: Erin Mansfield, USA Today