Trump’s receipts don’t back up new election claims

▪ Trump points finger at China

▪ Tillis stands his ground

▪ Trump’s teleprompter operator suspended

▪ FEC deadline takeaways

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President Trump’s sweeping claims of election interference during his primetime address to the country Thursday night were largely unsupported by documents the White House posted to its website as he was speaking.

Trump spoke for about half an hour from the East Room of the White House on Thursday, alleging that the U.S. intelligence community overlooked China’s infiltration of voter rolls, even suggested some officials could face criminal charges. As Trump spoke, a new landing page appeared on the White House website including links to some documents.

But the documents did not go nearly as far in their conclusions as Trump suggested. A CNN analysis of the documents found they are newly declassified but mostly discuss vulnerabilities that have been known for years that officials have been trying to address.

Trump’s main accusation against China was that it attempted to interfere in the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to former President Biden, in gaining access to the voter rolls — information often available for purchase — a move that has been known for years.

The Washington Post noted one CIA report said China wanted Trump to lose the 2020 election but described the Chinese government as having used political and economic influence rather than any election hacking.

Another CIA report said Chinese cyber actors were targeting Biden’s campaign rather than Trump’s, though it determined China “does not currently intend to covertly interfere to try to sway” the election’s outcome.

Trump alleged the intelligence community kept the information from him during his first term. The documents show intelligence officials debating over how to portray the information they obtained, a standard part of their analysis.

Some of the claims were determined to be not consequential or credible enough to include in its assessment.

A 2021 intelligence community report previously concluded with “high confidence” that China didn’t try to influence the outcome of the 2020 election. A minority view expressed with “moderate confidence” that China tried to oppose Trump’s reelection through social media and public statements but not direct interference.

Trump also made claims that at least 250,000 noncitizens were registered to vote in federal elections across multiple states. The White House cited commercially available databases for its analysis, but CNN reported these databases are considered less reliable than government data.

A document said 28,000 noncitizens were found to have illegally registered to vote across 25 states based on data from a government tool used to identify noncitizen voters.

Some localities have approved measures allowing noncitizen voting in local races, explaining why noncitizens are registered in some states, such as California. But noncitizen voting in federal elections remains illegal and rarely occurs, election experts have said.

Observers are now awaiting a briefing that Trump said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin plans to hold Friday on his department’s “recent work confirming cyber-vulnerabilities in our electronic voting systems.”

“Put together, these disclosures reveal an election system so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it,” Trump said. “It is not defensible.”

▪ The Hill: Trump rails against China with claims disputed by critics.

▪ The Hill: Five takeaways from Trump’s speech.

▪ The Hill: GOP fears Trump speech could boomerang.

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Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with........

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