In an address to the nation on Thursday night, the current president of the United States, Donald Trump, questioned the security of the country's electoral systems and claimed that China had interfered in the 2020 election cycle. The statements were quickly challenged by fact-checkers.
Trump, who for years has maintained without evidence that his defeat to Joe Biden in 2020 resulted from fraud, said that newly declassified intelligence data would reveal "shocking vulnerabilities in our electoral infrastructure".
The roughly 25-minute speech comes as the president and his allies try to reshape electoral rules before the November midterm elections, through redistricting and new voting requirements. Polls indicate that Democrats are favored to retake the House.
According to Trump, documents published on the White House website would show that China promoted the "illicit acquisition of 220 million records of American voters" starting in 2020. He also accused the "deep state" of concealing the alleged interference.
The declassified assessment by the U.S. intelligence community, however, indicates the opposite. "Our assessment is that China did not carry out interference efforts and considered, but did not implement, influence efforts intended to alter the outcome of the U.S. presidential election," the report says.
The same document adds that "Beijing did not interfere in electoral infrastructure, including vote counting or the transmission of election results." This contradicts Trump's statement that the Chinese action "included an attempt to manufacture illegal ballots" for Biden.
The president again pressured the Republican Congress to approve the "SAVE America Act," a bill that requires photo identification and proof of citizenship to vote. Critics say the measure would make it harder for low-income voters to access voting.
Trump also cited a review by the Department of Homeland Security that allegedly found about 278 thousand non-citizens registered to vote, but he did not detail the methodology nor state that these people voted. U.S. legislation already prohibits voting by non-citizens, and confirmed cases remain extremely rare.