President Donald Trump addressed the nation Thursday night, and during his speech, he revealed that China pulled off “the largest compromise of election data in history,” stealing 220 million U.S. voter files. He didn’t stop there. Trump told the country he was releasing evidence documenting just how compromised our elections have become.
That evidence is now public. The White House posted a batch of previously classified documents on a dedicated webpage, and they paint a picture of an election system compromised by hostile foreign governments and shielded by internal cover-ups. The administration is using the disclosures to push for voter ID, proof of citizenship, and tighter controls on mail ballots.
For years, officials assured Americans that election infrastructure, electronic voting machines, ballot-counting systems, all of it, was secure. The documents released this week directly contradict that claim.
“We judge that U.S. adversaries, including at a minimum Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, as well as non-state groups, have the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure,” a declassified U.S. Intelligence Community assessment states. It also warned that “centralized election-related data repositories, such as voter registration databases, pollbooks, and official election websites, are most vulnerable to exploitation, and adversaries could use access to these systems to disrupt election processes.”
The most alarming revelations include that the CIA reportedly obtained intelligence on a specific plot by the Maduro regime in Venezuela to digitally rig its own 2020 election, using methods designed to shift vote totals in ways that would survive an audit undetected. And starting around the 2020 cycle, China allegedly carried out that historic data heist, illicitly acquiring 220 million voter files containing names, addresses, phone numbers, and party affiliations, complete with a dedicated data exploitation unit assigned to the job.