Trump claims China stole 220 million voter records in 'largest election breach in history'

Donald Trump claimed Thursday that China illegally collected voter data on a massive scale and interfered in the 2020 presidential election.

In a nationally televised address Thursday, Trump said the White House had formally posted on its official website the findings of investigations compiled by the White House Government Transparency Task Force and the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, verified by the heads of the nation's top intelligence agencies.

Citing the documents, Trump said "the People's Republic of China executed what is believed to be the largest election data breach in history" during and in the years following the 2020 election, adding that China "illegally obtained about 220 million American voter files."

The records, he said, contained not only voters' names, addresses and phone numbers, but also sensitive details including party affiliation, voter registration status and other information that could be exploited for malicious purposes.

Trump also charged that US intelligence agencies had known about the breach and stayed silent. He said they "kept that information secret and hidden" and "didn't tell me — the president — or anyone else."

Trump then declassified and released a series of previously classified intelligence community assessments and related reports to draw public attention to what he described as the vulnerability of America's voting systems to outside attack.

"As one assessment noted, we assess that at a minimum, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and other US adversaries, as well as non-state actors, have the capability to compromise US election infrastructure," he said, adding that government election systems broadly were at risk.

Major US outlets including The New York Times and CNN pushed back against Trump's claims in real-time fact-checks, noting that many of the voter files China allegedly obtained were already publicly available public records. The outlets said no concrete evidence had emerged that the data breach had altered election results or led to fraudulent voting.