US President Donald Trump has renewed his campaign to cast doubt on the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden, this time portraying China as a key adversary that helped “rig” the vote.
President Trump claimed in a prime-time address Thursday that newly declassified intelligence documents exposed foreign election interference, despite a U.S. government intelligence assessment saying the contrary.
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The US president’s insistence on debunking the stolen election theory sparked one of the country’s most serious political crises when his supporters led a violent attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the final day of his first term.
President Trump has repeatedly claimed in recent months that the results of the 2020 election were manipulated, while simultaneously trying to force Congress to pass a restrictive voter identification law, which advocates call the SAVE America Act.
The law imposes strict ID requirements on U.S. voters and allows for greater federal intervention in elections. Although it passed in the House, Democratic opposition in the Senate has slowed its progress.
The claims come as President Trump is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in September, following last year’s chaotic trade war that seriously strained diplomatic relations.
Here’s what we know:
What did President Trump say about China?
President Trump has accused the Chinese government of stealing dangerous data about American voters. He also accused China of influencing the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, harming his fellow Republicans and damaging his 2020 re-election bid.
President Trump claimed that the Chinese government illegally collected 220 million voter files “over many years” and carried out the “largest election data breach in history” in 2020. The files contained voter registration data such as names and addresses.
“They just wanted to make you think your president wasn’t that enthusiastic, when in reality your president did a great job,” he added.
The Trump administration also released hundreds of previously secret documents Thursday to support the president’s claims.
However, a 2021 U.S. intelligence report concluded that China considered, but ultimately did not deploy, “influence efforts” to influence the 2020 election.
The assessment, conducted under President Trump’s then-Director of National Intelligence and current CIA Director John Ratcliffe, found that China had sought to collect information on U.S. voters, public opinion and political parties dating back to 2008. Typically, such data is publicly available and cannot be used to alter votes. However, it may be used to predict election results.
In 2021, U.S. media reported that a minority opinion from two intelligence committee officials at the time said that China used online influence campaigns and other means to undermine President Trump’s chances because of concerns about how his erratic policies would affect China’s semiconductor industry.
The partially redacted documents released Thursday also showed that both officials assessed that China may have used “overt messaging, nascent online covert influence capabilities, diplomatic leverage, and the use of economic leverage.” Officials acknowledged that these were not China’s “most aggressive options” and that their confidence in their allegations was low to moderate.
How did China react?
Speaking to US media ahead of President Trump’s speech on Thursday, Liu Zhang, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the US, refuted this claim.
“China has long adhered to the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries,” he said. “U.S. elections are an internal matter of the United States. Their outcome is determined by the votes of the American people. China has never interfered in U.S. presidential elections and never will.”
Several Democratic leaders have also responded to the claims. Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, in a series of posts on X, accused President Trump of sharing misleading information with the goal of disrupting the upcoming November midterm elections.
“President Trump’s shocking ‘bombshell’ statements about China are completely bogus,” Warner wrote. “The fact is that our intelligence community unanimously agreed that China did not try to change a single vote in the 2020 election. The single concurring opinion suggested that China may have tried to sway voters…but that has been public knowledge since 2021.”
What else did President Trump say about election fraud?
As he has in recent months, President Trump has cast doubt on mail-in voting ahead of the midterm elections, calling absentee voting “inherently corrupt.”
An analysis by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation coincidentally found that between 1982 and 2025, there were only 300 fraudulent absentee ballots. The Brookings Institution calculates that mail-in voting fraud accounts for 4 out of 10 million votes cast.
The president also pointed Thursday to CIA research on Venezuela that suggests U.S. voting machines are susceptible to digital manipulation.
Last month’s intelligence documents, compiling reports from 2004 to 2020, found that the Venezuelan government was able to digitally manipulate electronic voting systems in Venezuela, but not in the United States. Supporters of President Trump have long promoted the theory that the government of abducted former President Nicolas Maduro hacked U.S. voting machines in 2020.
The president also claimed that approximately 278,000 noncitizens are illegally registered to vote in federal elections, citing an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security.
The claims come as the administration seeks to force primarily Democratic-led states to submit private voter data for investigation. Past state surveys have found that 0.04 percent of voters are noncitizens, according to research from the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Separately, President Trump said the FBI would reopen an election fraud case in Michigan, a Democratic stronghold. The 2020 case involved a voter registration company collecting fraudulent or erroneous data that was discovered before the election. Authorities at the time said the registration was no longer valid.
Which country actually interfered in the US election?
An extensive investigation by the U.S. intelligence community in 2021 found that Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized multiple Russian government agencies to conduct influence operations to undermine the Biden campaign and draw support for the Trump campaign. The campaign also aimed to undermine public trust in the electoral process and further heighten political divisions.
The intelligence report determined that Iran secretly sought to undermine President Trump’s prospects, while Cuba, Venezuela, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah conducted “small-scale” efforts to influence the election.
Brazil under former President Jair Bolsonaro was not tipped off by U.S. intelligence, but an analysis by the investigative journalist organization Agencia Publica found that before and after the 2020 election, thousands of tweets trending in the country promoting conspiracy theories about election fraud and sharing pro-Trump online hashtags such as #GoTrumpReeleito and “Here’s to re-elect Trump.”
The bureau found that bots and supporters of Bolsonaro, a strong Trump ally, were largely driving the campaign.
