Democrats blasted President Donald Trump after his bombshell address revealing that China had compromised massive amounts of American voter data.
He also accused hidden government actors of burying the evidence and demanded Congress pass new voter ID and proof-of-citizenship rules.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., cast Thursday’s White House address as another attempt to rewrite Trump’s 2020 defeat.
“Trump knows he has lost American families,” Schumer stated. “He knows he has made their lives more expensive, endangered their friends & families with an unnecessary war, and embarrassed the country on the global stage.”
“And rather than pivot his policies, he is working to rig the midterms before a single vote has been cast. We won’t let him,” he added.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., also accused Trump of laying the groundwork to attack election results before voters cast ballots.
“Trump has once again chosen to spew deliberate and dangerous lies because the economy is a disaster and he knows that the American people have had enough,” Jeffries asserted.
“He has cynically and corruptly decided to call into question our free and fair elections before a single ballot has been cast,” he claimed. “Why? Republicans believe they need to cheat to win.”
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Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the Senate Intelligence Committee’s vice chairman, pushed back on the premise that voter files had to be hacked at all.
“The idea that somehow these countries are gathering voter files — these are publicly available. You don’t have to hack into them. You can buy them,” Warner told CBS News.
On CNN’s “The Source,” Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., reduced the address to a SAVE America Act “temper tantrum.”
“I heard nothing new. I heard no concrete evidence or even allegations that foreign actors actually changed the results of American elections. Yes. He claimed that there was some shocking. A secret Chinese conspiracy to try and change the results of a Venezuelan election,” Coons commented.
“There were lots of dark and sinister allegations. That we have vulnerabilities in our election system,” he added.
“But if you listen carefully to what he said, this was all making a case that we should pass the SAVE [America] Act in the Senate and his own Republican majority in the Senate is refusing to take it up and pass it.”
Trump’s speech bundled several explosive allegations into one election-security warning that included stolen voter data, pressure on American business leaders, anti-Trump media payoffs and what he described as a buried FBI lead about fake ballots for Joe Biden.
The president pointed viewers to documents on the White House website and treated them as the backbone of his case.
“The documents … show that over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle, 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 U.S. voter files,” Trump stated.
He said China had obtained “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 called the alleged breach “an unprecedented election security nightmare.”
The president’s second target was the government itself. He claimed the White House Government Transparency Task Force had uncovered evidence that officials hid what U.S. intelligence agencies learned about the voter data.
“U.S. spy agencies began learning about the compromise of voter registration files in 2020 when they discovered that tens of millions of voter data … in 18 states have been bought, stolen, or hacked by China,” he detailed.
“Yet those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information secret and hidden.”
Trump accused “deep-state” actors of filtering his daily briefings and operating what he called a “shadow government” that kept “China’s election meddling” from being discovered.
One CIA document, Trump claimed, showed China trying to turn major American business leaders against him.
He also accused China of offering “large sums of money” to American journalists he described as anti-Trump so they would write more “negative articles about him.”
The president’s most charged allegation involved ballots.
“Raw intelligence obtained by the FBI in 2020, yet buried by rogue bureaucrats, stated that China’s activities even included an attempt to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden,” Trump asserted.
Trump put another number at the center of the fraud claim: as many as 287,000 noncitizens on voter rolls nationwide.
“These disclosures reveal an election system so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it. It is not defensible. Hundreds of millions of U.S. voter files are in the hands of foreign governments,” Trump declared.
He also alleged that voter rolls still include noncitizens and dead people.
“Evidence of fraud has been buried. Hundreds of thousands of noncitizens and dead people are listed and active on the voter rolls,” Trump said.
“And yet, we still have elections with no voter ID, no proof of citizenship, and tens of millions of ballots floating aimlessly through the mail.”
The policy ask was the SAVE America Act, a bill that would require proof of citizenship at registration and photo ID at the ballot box. Its left-wing critics say the requirements would hurt minorities and other Democratic-leaning groups.
“This landmark bill requires that all voters must show photo voter ID,” Trump stated. “All voters must provide proof of citizenship.”
“The only reason you wouldn’t [pass it] is you want to cheat because your policies are so bad and your candidates are so pathetic that you can’t get away or can’t get elected any other way,” Trump added.
Beijing rejected the accusation almost immediately. “China has all along adhered to the principle of non-interference in others’ internal affairs,” Chinese Embassy spokesman Liu Chang said in a statement.
“The U.S. election is an internal matter of the U.S. Its outcome is determined by the votes of the American people. China has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the U.S.”
Trump said the administration was already contacting states and lawmakers about possible problems connected to the alleged data compromise.
A Friday briefing from Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, Trump said, would focus on cyber vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems.
“We’re also committing to be working with those states and local jurisdictions to help them fix and patch known technical vulnerabilities before the midterm elections,” Trump said.
“I’ve also ordered DHS to notify every state about noncitizens on their voter rolls and direct them to remove all ineligible voters from the lists immediately.”
