WASHINGTON, D.C. (Michigan News Source) – President Donald Trump returned to one of his signature issues Thursday night, using a primetime White House address to argue that Americans have been kept in the dark about alleged foreign election interference, voting system vulnerabilities, and what he described as years of government cover-ups.
The 27-minute speech focused on newly declassified intelligence and investigative findings that the Trump administration says show China illegally obtained approximately 220 million U.S. voter registration records during the 2020 election cycle. The president said, “That information includes 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.”
MORE NEWS: Poll: Only 18% of Voters Support Men Competing in Women’s Sports
Trump also alleged that intelligence officials failed to fully brief him, Congress, or the American public about the breach at the time. He said documents supporting the administration’s claims have been posted on whitehouse.gov.
Trump has long argued the 2020 election deserved greater scrutiny, while multiple courts rejected legal challenges to the election results and previous intelligence assessments concluded China did not deploy operations to alter the election outcome.
Election security claims target voting machines and voter rolls.
Trump also pointed to reports of vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems, claiming intelligence agencies identified weaknesses that foreign adversaries – including Venezuela, Russia, China and others – could exploit.
Another major claim involved voter rolls. Trump said investigators identified roughly 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote across several states, arguing the findings undermine years of Democratic claims that the issue is insignificant. He said the administration will notify the affected states and urge officials to remove ineligible voters from their rolls. Trump also urged Americans to pressure Congress to quickly pass the SAVE America Act, saying it is necessary to safeguard the integrity of U.S. elections.
Trump revives Michigan ballot collection allegations.
Michigan also landed in the spotlight during the speech. The administration alleged that FBI interviews with former canvassers tied to Democratic-aligned voter registration contractor GBI Strategies uncovered claims that some workers signed voter registration forms in other people’s names, submitted fraudulent registrations for people who did not exist, and received gift cards tied to the number of applications they produced.
Trump further alleged the Biden Justice Department blocked potential prosecutions, causing broader investigations to stall for years. He said he has directed the FBI to investigate the allegations and work with the Department of Justice to pursue any prosecutions deemed warranted.
MORE NEWS: Medicare Opens GLP-1 Floodgates for Seniors Despite Limited Data on the Oldest Patients
Documentation released tonight by the Trump administration shows an internal January 2022 email from an FBI Detroit agent arguing that the investigation into alleged fraudulent voter registration applications connected to GBI Strategies should not be closed without a broader investigation.
The Michigan documents released by Trump can be downloaded in a Michigan documents ZIP file.
Secretary of State Benson and Governor Whitmer push back.
Michigan Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who is running for governor, sent out a press release five minutes after Trump’s speech – and without having the time to review any of the released documents – reaffirming Michigan’s safe and secure elections. Benson dismissed President Donald Trump’s election security claims as “long debunked and baseless conspiracy theories,” arguing he should have focused instead on rising health care costs and Americans’ economic struggles.
Benson maintained that Michigan’s elections are secure, safe, accurately reflect the will of the voters, and are protected by bipartisan election officials, trained poll workers, and post-election audits. She also encouraged skeptical residents to serve as poll workers to see the election process firsthand.
Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer also dismissed Trump’s remarks, calling renewed claims about the 2020 election “conspiracy theories” that “must come to an end.” She said Michigan’s elections are “safe and secure,” argued the president’s latest claims about the state’s voting system have been repeatedly debunked, and urged residents to trust election officials and the certified results.
A new round in the ongoing election integrity battle.
If Trump’s goal was to reignite the national debate over election integrity, Thursday night’s address accomplished exactly that. Even with newly declassified documents and investigative records now in the public domain, many Democrats are unlikely to change their minds about what happened in 2020. Instead, the latest disclosures are likely to deepen an already entrenched divide between the two parties, with Michigan once again at the center of the national election security debate.
