A fact sheet released July 30 by the White House Government Transparency Task Force says China and its proxies bought, stole, or hacked voter data belonging to as many as 220 million Americans, including some information that was not publicly available.
The fact sheet pairs that finding with the intelligence community’s official definition of election interference, which includes a foreign power’s targeting of voter data.
It notes that, for a foreign country’s actions to amount to “election interference,” they do not have to change the actual results.
“That definition includes a foreign power’s targeting of voter registration infrastructure or data,” the task force states, citing declassified documents produced by the U.S. intelligence community.
The fact sheet was approved by the heads of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Department of Homeland Security, according to the White House.
Representatives from those agencies—as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation—also coordinated with the White House before Trump’s July 16 address and “approved the factual statements” drawn from intelligence documents used in the speech, the task force states.
Election Interference Defined
In his speech, Trump said China has long been meddling in U.S. elections, including that it was “working to influence” the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which President Joe Biden was ultimately declared the winner.
Trump did not explicitly claim that China managed to change the 2020 result, and neither did the heads of U.S. intelligence agencies.
The spy chiefs did say in the fact sheet that voter-registration data is itself part of election infrastructure and could be manipulated in ways that affect election results, for instance by preventing groups of voters from casting their ballots.
“Adversaries could alter data to potentially prevent individual voters or groups of voters from voting, causing delays on election day or forcing voters to use provisional ballots,” the task force states, citing intelligence community documents.
Hellbound and Down 