Declassified intelligence warns adversaries can hack voting machines, while Trump says Beijing’s theft of 220 million voter records proves America’s election system is dangerously exposed.
Kehinde Adegoke | International Agencies
President Donald Trump has accused U.S. intelligence agencies of hiding what he called “the biggest cover‑up in American history” — newly declassified documents showing that China carried out the largest compromise of election data ever recorded.
In a primetime address Thursday night, Trump declared that the People’s Republic of China illicitly acquired 220 million U.S. voter files beginning in the 2020 election cycle. The stolen data included names, addresses, phone numbers, and party affiliations — “everything needed to interfere with American democracy,” Trump said. He added that Beijing even created a dedicated unit to exploit the trove.
The disclosures, spanning 2020 to 2026, also reveal:
Electronic voting vulnerabilities: U.S. adversaries, including Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, were judged capable of compromising voting machines and ballot‑counting systems.
Foreign plots: CIA reporting detailed a Venezuelan scheme to digitally alter vote totals undetectably.
Michigan probe: FBI files described fraudulent voter registrations uncovered in a 2020 raid.
Non‑citizens on rolls: DHS identified at least 278,000 non‑citizens registered to vote in federal elections.
Trump warned: “Hundreds of millions of voter files are in foreign hands, our machines can be hacked, and fraud has been buried. This is a cyber threat aimed at the very heart of our democracy.”
Together, the disclosures depict an election system riddled with weaknesses: voter data in foreign hands, machines exposed to hacking, evidence of fraud buried, and rolls containing non‑citizens and deceased individuals.
The revelations raise urgent questions about the resilience of U.S. democracy, as Trump insists the American people were “lied to for years” about the true scale of election vulnerabilities.
