Trump revisits disputed claims about election security and declassifies documents
CBS News · LC · trust 43/100
Updated on: July 17, 2026 / 2:11 AM EDT / CBS News
In a primetime address Thursday evening, President Trump alleged the U.S. election system falls "catastrophically short," revisiting a topic that has drawn his attention for years — and making claims that election experts have heavily disputed.
The White House released a trove of newly declassified documents on election security in conjunction with the address. In a briefing with reporters several hours before the speech, a White House official acknowledged that none of the newly released information would allege that any votes were switched or voting machines hacked. The president and his allies have long insisted otherwise, falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him due to widespread fraud.
Mr. Trump used part of his speech to push lawmakers to pass the SAVE America Act, a suite of controversial proposed election law changes, including requirements to show proof of citizenship to register to vote. That legislation remains stuck in limbo, with some Senate Republicans skeptical. Mr. Trump's allies in the GOP caucus largely praised the speech and echoed his calls to pass the SAVE America Act, while Democrats blasted it and accused Mr. Trump of seeking to undermine elections.
Shortly after the speech wrapped up, David Becker, executive director for the Center for Election Innovation and Research, argued that little groundbreaking information was revealed.
"This administration has been in total control of the federal government for 18 months. They've redirected untold taxpayer resources to try to uncover evidence of massive voter fraud," he said. "And at the end of that 18 months, all we got is more rehashed, debunked conspiracy theories, many of which we've known about before and already knew didn't affect our elections."
One of the more notable allegations leveled by Mr. Trump was that the Chinese government had acquired 220 million U.S. voter registration files from 2020 to 2023 in what the president called "the largest compromise of election data in history." The information, the president said, included voters' names, addresses, phone numbers and party affiliations.
The president alleged that intelligence agencies "kept the information secret and hidden," never disclosing China's access to U.S. voter registration data to him or to Congress.
However, voter registration data is publicly available . Some states post the information online, and many others allow people to freely request it, though some personal information on voters is kept confidential. It's also not clear how China intended to use the data, and having access to voter rolls does not necessarily allow people to commit fraud.
"It sounds bad when you hear about it," said Becker, who is a CBS News election law contributor. "The reality is: voter files in the United States are public."
A 2020 intelligence report declassified almost four years ago found China had obtained multiple states' voter data "to conduct public opinion analysis on the 2020 US general election."
There remains no evidence that China — or any other country — tried to manipulate the results of the 2020 election by interfering with voting processes. The U.S. intelligence community assessed in March 2021 that no foreign actor "attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process," including the casting of ballots, the vote-counting process or voter registrations.
Mr. Trump also alleged that China "fought like hell" to prevent him from winning in 2020: "The Chinese government wanted [the] U.S. president to lose the next election, and the reason they wanted me to lose is because they knew I was wise to them."
There is some debate about China's role in the 2020 race, which the documents released Thursday reflect. The National Intelligence Council publicly assessed shortly after the election that China stayed on the sidelines, deciding neither a Trump nor Biden presidency would be "advantageous enough for China to risk getting caught meddling." But that assessment notes a "minority view" from one intelligence official that China did try to denigrate Mr. Trump, including through social media posts and official statements.
The National Intelligence Council's assessment did find that Russia tried to influence the 2020 election by promoting the Trump campaign, while Iran tried to undercut the Trump campaign. Still, neither country tried to interfere with voting systems.
China, for its part, has strongly denied any interest in interfering in U.S. elections. The Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., told CBS News on Thursday it has "all along adhered to the principle of non-interference in other's internal affairs."
Mr. Trump also pointed to findings by the federal government that "hundreds of thousands of non-citizens and dead people are listed and active on the voter rolls."
In particular, he pointed to a Department of Homeland Security review of state voter rolls and public records that determined that more than 250,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in federal elections across four states — California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada.
Becker questioned those findings, arguing "we should take that with a great big grain of salt."
"That's based on using commercial data that cannot be used," Becker said during a CBS News special report. "It's going to create a ton of false positives. I guarantee you, that data includes a ton of people, maybe even a majority of people, who are absolutely eligible voters, and states would probably be breaking the law if they remove those voters from the rolls."
It's illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections, and documented cases are extremely rare. The Brennan Center for Justice looked at 42 jurisdictions where a combined 23.5 million people voted in 2016, and found just 30 instances of suspected non-citizen voting.
State-level results are similar. A 2024 audit in Georgia found 20 of the state's 8.2…
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