WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump released a trove of documents during a primetime address to the nation that allies had hyped as a smoking gun that would prove his long-debunked allegations of mass voter fraud.
Speaking from the White House on Thursday night, he described shocking revelations, like Chinese meddling to undermine his failed candidacy in 2020 and a cover-up by the “deep state.” He claimed, “Americans were blatantly lied to about
the security of our election infrastructure."
But a review by The Associated Press found no such confirmation in the collection of newly declassified reports, investigation files, intelligence analysis and assorted correspondence. Many pages are so heavily redacted that their findings are unclear. Others outline vulnerabilities and assessments that have been well-documented for years. There's no evidence that China or any other foreign entity manipulated the vote in 2020 or any other year.
“The White House promised a bombshell, and they delivered a dud," said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, who attended a White House briefing on the material ahead of the speech. Despite what appeared to be a concerted effort by administration officials, ”there was absolutely nothing here that was news, nothing here that even calls into question past elections and certainly not the 2020 election."
Here's a look at what the documents say.
“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, resulting in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files,” Trump said Thursday night.
There is no evidence, however, that China actually used that information in any way.
It has long been established that China collects immense volumes of data on Americans unrelated to any efforts to manipulate votes or alter election outcomes. And public versions of voter files are widely available, including online, and can be bought and sold by campaigns and political parties so they know which doors to knock on and where to send mail.
China’s efforts to influence the 2020 campaign were already well-documented, and there was no assessment of any direct election interference. The records released Thursday night do not refute that conclusion, but reveal an internal intelligence community debate about how to characterize Beijing’s efforts and motives.
The emails show that a dissenting viewpoint was that China had taken steps to “denigrate” Trump. But that perspective, instead of being hidden, was already reflected in the intelligence community assessment produced after the election.
China on Friday called Trump's allegations “groundless” and “entirely fabricated” and said it has never interfered in U.S. elections and has no interest in doing so.
In his remarks, Trump touted the release of a new Department of Homeland Security investigation, based on state voter rolls and public records, that he said had identified approximately 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote in federal elections.
The report said the agency uncovered more than a quarter of a million noncitizens illegally registered to vote in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada, based on public records, which are often erroneous or incomplete. Another 28,000 noncitizens, it claimed, were found on voter rolls in 25 states using the new Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system.
There is no allegation, however, that any of those people actually voted, which would be a crime.
That data has also not been verified. Reports have found that the SAVE database is plagued with errors, including outdated information that has often classified naturalized citizens as noncitizens. Indeed, a federal judge has barred the database from being used over fears that voters will be wrongly purged from voter rolls.
Studies have found noncitizen voting to be extremely rare. Noncitizens are also allowed to vote in some local elections, and could be on the rolls for that reason.
Trump has spent years criticizing the intelligence community's assessment that Russia meddled in the 2016 election to help him win. But the documents shed new light on the country's ongoing efforts.
One declassified document from 2020 portrays Russia as the country that has tried the most to penetrate American election systems — but in an effort to defeat Joe Biden. It notes how Russia worked to amplify claims that Biden, while serving as vice president, engaged in inappropriate behavior involving Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm that employed his son Hunter, a charge frequently repeated by Trump and Republicans.
“Their aim is to defeat the former Vice President and ensure the President’s victory,” reads the document from the National Intelligence Council.
The document went on to state that both China and Iran wanted Trump to lose. But it included a chart documenting each country's known efforts. Only Russia was marked as having been known to have engaged in “targeting, accessing, or manipulating election processes or election-related systems.”
Russia has continued to deny interfering in U.S. affairs.
Many of the documents released involve a Michigan case in which a seemingly pro-Biden canvassing operation submitted thousands of questionable voter registrations to a local election official in 2020. The official did not accept the registrations and alerted authorities.
The documents include notes from at least one FBI agent that are heavily redacted but indicate that the agent unsuccessfully pushed for further investigation and charges through 2024. Michigan Republicans in 2023 complained the state’s Democratic attorney general did not charge anyone.
However, the case was closed “because logical investigation and/or leads have been exhausted, and the investigation to date did not identify a criminal violation or a priority threat to national security," according to one of the records.
The documents, Trump told the nation, included intelligence “revealing shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure" that leave it vulnerable “to hacking, exploitation and foreign interference.”
One report included a list of recent breaches -- mostly by Russia — and called on state and local election officials to step up their defenses to prevent information from being used to obtain absentee ballots or alter voter rolls. Election officials acknowledge that voting machines also carry risk -- which is why they don’t rely on them alone to ensure the accuracy of the vote. Safeguards like physical security, equipment testing, paper ballot backups and post-election audits help to catch machine errors or threats.
But it is unclear what the administration is doing to facilitate their efforts. Earlier this month, Trump ousted members of a bipartisan federal election commission that distributes federal grants to states, oversees the testing of voting systems and maintains the national voter registration form, after the group resisted his efforts to require potential voters to document their U.S. citizenship before registering.
Trump has also cut millions of dollars in federal funding from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, which helped state and local election officials keep elections secure, and disbanded an FBI task force focused on investigating foreign influence operations, including those that target U.S. elections.
The documents make repeated reference to the risks posed by large databases of voter information, including registration databases and election websites that could be accessed or manipulated by foreign adversaries.
But the SAVE system, which Trump has been pushing states to adopt, has been criticized as an unlawful, centralized federal database of voter information, which could be another target.
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Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writers Nicholas Riccardi, Ali Swenson, Katie Vogel and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.
