President Donald Trump leveled sweeping accusations Thursday against the U.S. intelligence community, claiming officials deliberately withheld evidence of Chinese efforts to influence American elections.
Trump seized on newly declassified emails he says reveal a bitter internal dispute over how Beijing’s election activities were characterized and reported.
Central to Trump’s claims is an email in which a National Security Agency analyst allegedly wrote, “We have deliberately massaged our one pending (presidential daily brief) to avoid any direct links to the election.”
Trump argued this amounted to a deliberate concealment, stating, “Those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information secret and hidden. They did not disclose (it) to me as president or to anyone else.”
Trump stopped short of alleging China changed votes or altered election results, instead arguing Beijing conducted an influence campaign aimed at shaping American public perceptions.
The declassified documents do not establish the existence of a politically motivated conspiracy, instead portraying competing intelligence assessments over whether China’s actions targeted the presidential race or broader U.S. policy and public opinion.
Other intelligence officials pushed back on the NSA analyst’s approach in the emails, with one writing that “the mind boggles” and another calling the decision “highly irregular.”
One official alleged the intelligence community was “deliberately avoiding mentioning a connection to elections for non-substantive reasons,” according to a November 2020 email included in the newly released documents.
Trump also claimed an FBI official wrote that she was personally running a “shadow government” to prevent the China intelligence from reaching the public.
Trump directed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Justice Department, the FBI, and the CIA to investigate why the intelligence was withheld, fire anyone found to have participated in a cover-up, and pursue criminal charges “if appropriate.”
Trump used the address to press Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, calling the newly released intelligence evidence that election security rules must be tightened before the midterm elections.
“Most importantly, addressing this crisis of election security demands that Congress must pass the SAVE America Act,” Trump said. “These reforms are urgently needed to stop the vulnerabilities that I’ve mentioned.”
The SAVE America Act passed the House in February but stalled in the Senate in March, when a 53-47 vote fell short of the 60 votes needed to advance it.
The legislation would require documentary proof of citizenship to register for federal elections, photo identification to vote, and ongoing state efforts to identify and remove noncitizens from voter rolls.
Trump also called for eliminating mail-in voting except in cases of illness, disability, military deployment, or travel, though the current text of the SAVE America Act does not include that prohibition.
China flatly denied any interference, with Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Chang telling Fox News Digital, “China has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the U.S.”
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., responded critically, saying, “Americans heard the president once again repeat claims about our elections that have been investigated for years and repeatedly rejected by the Intelligence Community.”
Despite the tensions, Trump is still expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in September, according to a senior White House official.
