Declassified documents undercut Trump’s ‘rigged’ election claim

President Donald Trump stood in the East Room of the White House on Thursday night, his top law enforcement and intelligence leaders assembled before him, and told the country that its elections had been left open to being “rigged.” His administration released intelligence that, he suggested, would prove it.

The documents did no such thing.

The roughly 25-minute primetime address, delivered with just under four months until the midterm elections, was less a disclosure than a reprise. Nearly six years after losing to Joe Biden, and five-plus years after pressuring his own vice president to reject the result, Trump returned to conspiracy theories that his own intelligence agencies have repeatedly examined and rejected.

“Great damage has been done to our country,” Trump said. “Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen, and the trust of the American people was lost.”

While simultaneously ordering the declassification of intelligence documents in parallel to his primetime address, the material newly released by the administration did not prove that Trump won the 2020 election. Instead, the president overstated the details and made claims that did not match the actual conclusions by the intelligence community.

The material his administration released was heavily redacted, and included documents that dealt with China’s ability to influence elections as well as a CIA analysis finding that Venezuela had “some capability in manipulating electronic voting systems” — though in Venezuelan elections, not U.S. ones. Nothing in the release indicated that either country had hacked or accessed critical American voting infrastructure. Trump nevertheless claimed the material had been “buried and covered up,” though his own intelligence leaders had access to it during his first term.

The clearest rebuttal came from one of his own appointees. John Solomon — a former journalist, prominent election denier and member of Trump’s election task force — acknowledged Thursday night that no foreign actor had manipulated a single vote.

“The intelligence community has zero evidence that someone, that a foreign power flipped a vote in 2020, ’22 or ’24,” Solomon told MS NOW after attending the speech. Venezuela, he acknowledged, had not tampered with U.S. voting machines — a claim advanced for years by some of Trump’s most ardent allies in the effort to overturn the 2020 election.

“The intelligence is very clear, they did it on their own machines,” Solomon said. In fact, one of the CIA reports in the document dump, assessing intelligence gathered across nearly two decades, said that “neither Smartmatic nor the Venezuelan Government had the capability — that is, the level of control or access required — to manipulate the outcome of an election outside of Venezuela.”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who served as director of national intelligence in the final year of Trump’s first term, issued a carefully worded statement about the declassifications. The documents, he said, “shed further light on China’s intentions” and on Venezuela’s “capabilities.” Nowhere in his statement did he assert that foreign interference in voting infrastructure changed the outcome of the 2020 election.

Recommended Maddowblog Pressed on Pulte’s role, Trump says the quiet part loud, emphasizes ‘rigged elections’ Steve Benen News Trump suggests federal control of elections in ‘some areas’ Ebony Davis That gap between the president’s language and his officials’ is not accidental. Intelligence assessments, including those compiled during Trump’s first term, draw a hard line between influence and interference. Influence campaigns did occur in 2020: social media operations by Iran and China aimed at weakening Trump, and by Russia aimed at denigrating Biden. Interference — technically compromising voting systems to alter votes and change an outcome — did not. Intelligence officials concluded that China never crossed it. Still, on Thursday, Trump claimed the documents showed that “starting during the 2020 election,” China carried out “the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files.” The underlying intelligence said something considerably smaller: that China “had previously purchased 2020 voter data” from seven states — a fully legal acquisition. In fact, voter data is often available for the public to freely download. The release of the intelligence material related to China’s influence efforts comes just two months after the president traveled to the country to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and made no public mention of the allegations that he leveled against the country on Thursday night. A current administration official familiar with the deliberations of the raw intelligence material and granted anonymity to address a sensitive topic told MS NOW before the speech that the information related to China’s influence campaigns was known to the intelligence community prior to Trump’s visit to Beijing. The president also warned of “critical intelligence revealing shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure,” a pronouncement that was foreshadowed by former intelligence officials who spoke with MS NOW. The White House, however, did not provide evidence that foreign or domestic actors have hacked into or hampered voting systems in the U.S. Ahead of his address to the country, Trump spent weeks seeding the ground. After Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard resigned in May, he installed Bill Pulte, a former housing agency official with no intelligence background, as her successor in an acting capacity. In June, he brought Solomon into the White House as a special government employee to help coordinate the declassification of documents related to the election. Multiple current and former intelligence and administration officials told MS NOW before the address what Solomon confirmed after it: No U.S. intelligence exists showing that any foreign country changed the outcome of the 2020 election. Trump has now had command of the world’s largest intelligence apparatus for more than a year and a half of a second term, and access to every classified holding in it. He has yet to produce it. Laura Barrón-López Laura Barrón-López covers the White House for MS NOW. Vaughn Hillyard Vaughn Hillyard is a senior White House reporter for MS NOW.