PRESIDENT Donald Trump has accused China of a major election breach and that Beijing was trying to prevent his re-election in 2020.
In an address to the nation from the White House on Thursday, Trump revealed a staggering amount of declassified intelligence to the public.
He said the CIA had found China acquired 220million voters’ files – the “largest compromise of election data in history“.
Voter files include names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences, and other sensitive data.
Election data was “exposed to levels never thought possible to hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference”, Trump said.
Trump said that “deep state” intelligence officers had even tried to suppress China‘s meddling from him – including that China had “attempted to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden” in 2020.
Trump said: “Yet those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information hidden.
“They did not disclose it to me as president, and to the best of our knowledge, they did not inform Congress.”
The President also announced China had been trying to influence the results of the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential election.
He alleged that Beijing had effectively run an influence campaign to make him sound “not so hot”.
China even identified journalists they could pay “large sums of money” to to continue writing negatively about him, Trump said.
The President said: “The reason they wanted me to lose is because they knew I was wise to them and charged them billions and billions of dollars worth of tariffs.”
Trump used the speech to promote his Save America Act – an election integrity and voter security piece of legislation that he has been unable to get through Congress.
He said a DHS review had found 278,000 non-citizens were registered to vote in elections, but the real number would be higher as “Democrat states refused to share voter files”.
A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said Beijing “has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the US”.
An unclassified 2021 US intelligence community assessment found no indications any foreign actor attempted 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.
The address came hours after White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt returned to the briefing room following her maternity leave and quickly sparred with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
Collins pressed Leavitt over whether Trump would present evidence capable of triggering criminal charges.
She noted that Trump had been back in office for more than 540 days and asked why nobody has been if evidence existed.
“If what he says tonight is backed up by evidence, why hasn’t anyone been charged?” Collins asked.
Leavitt replied: “He hasn’t revealed it yet. He hasn’t declassified the documents yet, and you will see what he says tonight, and then we’ll move forward appropriately from there.”
Collins then appeared to ask whether the Justice Department could bring charges following the president’s announcement.
“I don’t speak on behalf of the Justice Department, Kaitlan, you know that,” Leavitt fired back.
When Collins pushed again, the press secretary appeared visibly irritated.
“You’ll have to ask the Justice Department,” Leavitt said.
“I don’t charge people. I speak on behalf of the president.”
Thursday marked Leavitt’s first White House press briefing since she went on maternity leave in late April.
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