President Donald Trump is expected to deliver a primetime address tonight to address foreign efforts to influence US elections, the latest in what election observers have warned is a campaign to sow mistrust and try to undercut his 2020 loss. Trump has for years spread falsehoods about the 2020 election, and the address sets up another high-profile opportunity for him to make unsubstantiated claims about the results. Meanwhile, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt revealed that Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator, who is under investigation for potential insider trading, has been put on administrative leave “without pay.”
China considered trying to influence the outcome of the 2020 election but chose not to out of fear of upsetting US-China relations, US intelligence agencies concluded in a report declassified in 2021. But there was a minority view in the intelligence community that China had in fact acted. The then-National Intelligence Officer for Cyber assessed that China took “at least some steps to undermine former President Trump’s reelection chances, primarily through social media and official public statements and media.”
The minority report could become relevant for Trump’s speech if he tries to make the case that China was more aggressive in the 2020 election than spy agencies revealed publicly. Another claim that could resurface centers around an unsubstantiated tip that the FBI got in 2020 that the Chinese government was producing “tens of thousands” of fake driver’s licenses with the goal of facilitating fraudulent votes by mail for Joe Biden.
Republican Senator Chuck Grassley has accused senior FBI officials of suppressing the raw intelligence report in 2020. The claim was never substantiated, and the US electoral system makes such a fraud scheme highly unlikely to go undetected given the scale included in the accusation.
As they wait to see what President Trump will say tonight, Democratic election chiefs are accusing Trump of making elections less secure by withdrawing federal support for election administration, while attempting to drastically change the rules months away from the midterms. Election officials told CNN they are confident in the preparation they had done for the midterms – and in their ability to fend off potential attempts by the Trump administration to intervene.
But they said that a top focus was countering disinformation and voter confusion, particularly with the rhetoric coming out of Washington, DC. Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas told CNN, "Trust the 2016 election results. Don’t trust the 2020 election results. Trust the 2024 election results, but don’t trust it enough because we’re going to change everything about it." Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said a major priority of his office was communicating to voters that election rules in his state have not changed.
GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick said on Thursday that he hopes President Trump will be able to move on from the 2020 election and instead focus during his address on issues like the affordability crisis many Americans are facing and the Iran war. Sen. Ossoff: Trump's continued 2020 election denialism is 'pathetic and dangerous.' Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, who is running for reelection in the battleground state, said today that President Donald Trump is the “world’s most famous sore loser.”
After the 2020 election, Trump pushed the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” votes to overturn the election results after his loss in the state. All software comes with vulnerabilities in the code if you look hard enough. The software used in voting machines is no different. Over the last several years, for example, security researchers have found flaws in devices used to mark and count ballots. But there have been no known instances of those vulnerabilities being exploited to change the results of an election.
That’s because election administrators have multiple security controls in place to make carrying out an election-changing hack exceedingly difficult. And, generally, voting machines aren’t connected to the Internet, despite claims to the contrary from election skeptics. Nonetheless, fixing software bugs in voting equipment is important, security experts and election officials say, to improve public confidence in elections and to prevent a cyberattack from disrupting the voting process.
In recent years, voting equipment vendors have become more serious about working with outside security researchers to find and fix vulnerabilities. The Department of Homeland Security has also overseen a program where some of the most talented hackers in the government stress test voting machines before they are certified by the Election Assistance Commission.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in February that it had found “extremely concerning” cybersecurity practices with voting machines it obtained in Puerto Rico. But the details about those practices that ODNI released did not prove the agency’s claims, one cybersecurity expert previously told CNN.
In Donald Trump’s first term as president, he signed a law establishing the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which invested heavily in election security. The FBI also established a task force for combating foreign influence threats. Trump once expressed support for the very same election security measures that he has cut. In a February 2020 Oval Office meeting with senior US officials and White House staff, Trump was so encouraged by federal efforts to protect election systems that he suggested the FBI and Department of Homeland Security hold a press conference to take credit for the work, CNN has reported.
Steve Hobbs, the Democratic secretary of state from Washington, told CNN, "The federal government is shrinking their resources to the states that we need to defend ourselves against real threats – cyber actors from Russia and China. And while they’re restricting this, they’re attacking our very way we do elections." Foreign countries do attempt to influence US elections, and isolated cases of voter fraud occur, but independent analysts still regularly rank the US as having one of the most secure election systems in the world.
Unlike many countries, American elections are administered by thousands of state and local officials – as opposed to a centralized federal agency that could be vulnerable to foreign cyberattacks or internal manipulation from the incumbent president. Additionally, dozens of anti-fraud safeguards are built into the process, from voter registration to casting ballots and tallying the results. Experts say the system works effectively: Studies from right-leaning and left-leaning think tanks have found that the rate of voter fraud in US elections is less than 0.0001%.
That’s what happened in Georgia in 2020. President Donald Trump narrowly lost to Joe Biden, but claimed the results were rigged. State election officials initiated a hand-count of every ballot, which confirmed Biden’s victory. Even if concerns aren’t raised about the results, every state now conducts some form of a post-election audit. These audits are designed to confirm that the results reported by voting machines accurately reflect what the ballots said.
When evidence of fraud exists, judges have nullified results and ordered redo elections. In 2020, Trump and his allies filed dozens of lawsuits, but no judge found their allegations that the results were fraudulent worthy of legal action. Speaking to reporters Wednesday at a conference of state election officials, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said that no matter what President Trump said in his Thursday remarks, Raffensperger’s office would stay focused on carrying out state election law.
Raffensperger, who rebuffed the president’s pleas that he “find” the votes that would have flipped his 2020 loss in the state, has been a target of relentless attacks by Trump and his allies. He will end his term as state elections chief next year, having lost a gubernatorial campaign in the GOP primary. He emphasized that Georgia’s 2020 election had already been heavily scrutinized – including by US attorneys appointed by Trump during his first term – and the reviews found no evidence of widespread fraud.
“At the end of the day, I think what we would be best served as Republicans, and President Trump would be best serve, along with our Republican Party, if he would focus on the economy,” Raffensperger said. When President Donald Trump delivers his remarks tonight, several senior state election officials – including some from 2020 battleground states that were the target of his claims of election fraud – will be attending a dinner at Mount Rushmore as part of an annual summer conference for the National Association of Secretaries of State.
NASS’ semiannual conferences have historically been wonky affairs, where state officials give presentations on best practices while vendors and outside consultants rub shoulders with election chiefs. The organization’s winter conference, however, took place against the backdrop of the FBI’s seizure of 2020 ballots in Georgia. The Trump administration injected additional chaos, by making plans for three Cabinet officials to host a panel, only for them to bail at the last minute. This time, attendees shared speculation on what Trump might say, as they game-planned how they might respond. Some conference attendees wondered if they should even attend the Mount Rushmore event. There were jokes about whether the NASS program planners could project the Trump speech onto the monument. “We could watch it on the Founding Fathers,” one election official quipped.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer slammed President Donald Trump ahead of his primetime address tonight, arguing that Trump’s statements about the 2020 elections are “bullsht” and aimed at harming the credibility of the midterms in November. Critics fear that Trump will repeat his unfounded claims that the 2020 election was “stolen,” during the address which is expected to be about the foreign efforts to influence US elections. Schumer said, "The bottom line is if Trump wants to win the American people over, instead of the bullsht that he’s pedaling about 2020, he ought to focus on lowering people’s costs, getting rid of the chaos in administration, getting rid of the corruption." Schumer added, "No one has any faith that Trump is going to tell the truth. He’s lied for six years. He’s particularly lied about the elections in 2020. No one is going to have any faith in what he says and does. And as long as he keeps appointing sycophants to the agencies in charge of the intelligence, no one has any faith or trust in what he’s going to say." The substance of Trump’s speech has been closely held, and advisers have intensely debated what should be included, according to people familiar with the plans. Alongside Trump’s speech, the White House has been weighing whether to release a cache of documents related to, among other topics, China and its role in US elections, the people said. A major effort has been underway inside the administration in recent weeks to locate intelligence information that could support Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud and interference. A task force, under the direction of conservative writer John Solomon, has been working to identify documents to be declassified and made public, the people familiar with the matter said. Not all administration officials are on board with the effort, however. Some worry declassifying wide swaths of information could provide a muddled picture of American voting security and undermine confidence in elections. And others fear the information could risk jeopardizing intelligence collection methods. As we await the president’s speech, here’s the latest news from the White House. The White House also said Trump will attend the FIFA World Cup final on Sunday — capping a weekend of events tied to the tournament. The president will first travel to New York City on Friday to attend a FIFA reception at Trump Tower before attending the championship match between Spain and Argentina at MetLife Stadium on Sunday. The White House announced Thursday that 6.5 million American children have been signed up for Trump Accounts, citing the Council of Economic Advisers. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she signed up her two children while she was on maternity leave, while briefing reporters at the White House. The accounts, which are a new federal savings and investment vehicle for eligible children, went live on July 4. They are like traditional IRAs in that money in the accounts will grow tax deferred. But the rules for Trump Accounts differ during the so-called “growth period” – which encompasses the first 18 years of a child’s life. The account belongs to the child, but the parent, legal guardian or other authorized adult who opened it will serve as custodian until the child is 18. Money withdrawn from the account before the child reaches age 59-1/2 may be subject both to income taxes and a 10% early withdrawal tax. But the 10% penalty won’t apply if the money is used for qualified expenses, including: higher education costs, purchase of a first-time home (up to $10,000), birth or adoption costs (up to $5,000 per child), emergency expense (up to $1,000 a year) and some medical expenses. CNN’s Adam Cancryn, Molly English, Kevin Liptak, Donald Judd, Alejandra Jaramillo and Christian Sierra contributed to this report. American spy and security agencies spent years preparing to defend the 2020 election through intelligence collection and early public warnings about foreign meddling, though some of those warnings have since been removed from government websites. The 2020 election turned out to be the type of active foreign influence environment that US intelligence officials had come to expect after Russia showed how hackers and trolls could be used to sow discord in the 2016 election. The upshot: “We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results,” the US intelligence community said in its post-2020 election assessment of foreign influence, a report that in 2018 President Donald Trump himself ordered be created. Russia and Iran tried to undermine public confidence in the 2020 election, US intelligence agencies assessed. China considered trying to influence the outcome of the election but chose not to out of fear of upsetting US-China relations, according to the assessment. The US intelligence community distinguishes between foreign interference efforts, or those aimed at disrupting the casting and counting of ballots, and foreign influence efforts aimed at shaping voters’ perceptions. Influence operations are things like social media disinformation campaigns or the use of intelligence agents to push a government’s point of view in the American press. Interference operations can be physical or cyber attacks on election infrastructure. The 2020 election saw foreign influence, not interference, operations, according to the intelligence assessment. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that the administration is working with state and local officials to boost detection of cyclosporiasis cases and trace the origins of the growing outbreak. “The White House is closely monitoring the situation, has a handle on the situation,” she said during a press briefing. “We’re committed to providing the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and (Food and Drug Administration) the resources that they need.” Leavitt also urged Americans to follow CDC guidance on properly washing and cooking raw ingredients amid the outbreak, which had increased to more than 1,600 confirmed cases and more than 5,100 additional cases under investigation as of earlier this week. People with cyclosporiasis may have symptoms, including watery diarrhea, cramping and bloating, for weeks. She rejected suggestions that the lengthy leadership vacancies atop the CDC and FDA had slowed the government’s response, insisting that the health agencies have had all the resources needed to publicly distribute information on the parasite’s spread. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to say if there would be any accompanying charges with President Donald Trump’s Thursday night primetime address. Asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins why no one has been charged if there is evidence of election fraud or interference revealed in tonight’s speech, Leavitt emphasized that Trump “hasn’t revealed” the evidence yet. “He hasn’t declassified the documents yet, and you will see what he says tonight, and then we’ll move forward appropriately,” Leavitt said, adding: “I don’t speak on the behalf of the Justice Department.” Leavitt was generally tight-lipped about the upcoming primetime speech during her first press briefing back from maternity leave, but previewed that the “findings” will “shock” those who tune in. CNN reported earlier that Trump intends to reveal what he will claim is new information related to foreign efforts to influence US elections, including from China. He is also expected to discuss purported vulnerabilities in election infrastructure, including voting machines. Whether the findings relate to the 2020 election Trump lost, or are about other contests, isn’t clear. Trump’s own appointees in 2020 found that presidential election was free of major fraud or foreign interference. Leavitt downplayed the idea Trump was consumed by his loss in 2020, and said the American public would be “relieved to hear what they are hearing from the president of the United States and his commitment to transparency and the focus on the integrity of our elections tonight.” “I think all Republicans and Democrats should recognize this should be a nonpartisan issue. If we don’t have safe and secure elections in our country, we cannot have a country,” she said. President Donald Trump will attend the FIFA World Cup final on Sunday, the White House announced Thursday, capping a weekend of events tied to the tournament. The president will first travel to New York City on Friday to attend a FIFA reception at Trump Tower before attending the championship match between Spain and Argentina at MetLife Stadium on Sunday.
