Fact check: Trump revives US election fraud claims
In a primetime address, US President Donald Trump alleged Chinese voter interference in the 2020 US election. DW examined the declassified documents behind his claims
In a primetime address, US President Donald Trump alleged Chinese voter interference in the 2020 US election. DW examined the declassified documents behind his claims. US President Donald Trump delivered a primetime speech on Thursday assailing the country's voting system and making several unverified claims about the electoral process. He touted new declassified evidence about alleged Chinese interference in the 2020 election, dredged up an old case in Michigan about voter fraud and repeated a campaign trail favorite: that noncitizens are illegally registered to vote. Trump has long cast doubt on the integrity of US elections, falsely claiming that the 2020 election was "stolen." Every relevant investigation, including dozens of court rulings, state-level audits and recounts all came to the same conclusion that Trump lost that election, by more than 7 million in the popular vote and 306-232 in the Electoral College. "The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history," read a joint statement in 2020 from the government and industry bodies that oversee US election security. No evidence showed any voting system deleted, altered, or compromised votes, the statement added. DW Fact check dove into some of Trump's latest election-related claims and the trove of declassified documents behind them. The White House greets visitors to its homepage with a pop-up pointing to newly declassified election documents Image: whitehouse.gov Did China interfere in the 2020 election? Claim: "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 US voter files. That information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences, and other sensitive data that would be needed to register to vote and engage in other nefarious activities, which is exactly what was happening," Trump said in his speech. DW Fact check: Misleading This claim stretches far beyond what the declassified documents show.
First, voter records are often public or available for commercial purchase. One of the declassified documents explains that "publicly available US voter registration information for six states was downloaded" by a Chinese actor on January 14, 2022, and that "the actual motivations for collecting this information is unknown." Additionally, the official view of the US intelligence community, from a report declassified in 2021, is that there were "no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US election, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results." They did find proof that Russia authorized an influence campaign to support Trump's reelection and that Iran did the same to undercut him. As for China, they wrote, "We assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US Presidential election. We have high confidence in this judgment." The report said that China prioritized stable US ties over election interference. China did, however, take "some steps to try to undermine former President Trump's reelection." According to the documents, there was a dissenting view within the intelligence community, with one senior intelligence official writing a memo that "Beijing has taken some low-level, exploratory steps to denigrate the President and shape voter perceptions ahead of the election." But nothing in the documents amounts to Trump's claim of an "unprecedented election security nightmare." This initial review draws on more than 20 declassified documents. DW will continue to examine this claim as reporting develops. A voter receives their ballot at a polling location in Michigan in 2020, the same election cycle Trump's speech alleges was marred by voter fraud in the state Image: Adam J. Dewey/NurPhoto/picture alliance What the FBI actually found in Michigan Claim: "The documents state that some canvassers admitted to FBI agents that they signed voter registration forms and other people's names, submitted fraudulent registration for people who did not exist and received gift cards tied to the number of applications that they produced.
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