Trump reveals China stole voter registration data from 220M Americans in primetime speech

President Trump revealed that China stole the voter registration data of 220 million Americans as part of his primetime speech on Thursday.

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“Over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People’s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files,” Trump said in remarks from the East Room of the White House.  

“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, which is exactly what was happening,” the president continued. “This data loss presents an unprecedented election security nightmare.

“The intelligence even shows that China assigned a data exploitation unit specifically to this new project.” 

Some government officials reportedly knew China stole at least some voter registration data as early as 2020, but didn’t tell the president about it before the election that year, according to the president. 

“Members of the deep state – a very,very famous group of people – in many cases in our intelligence agencies, worked to actively suppress and downplay information about the extent of China’s sinister election meddling, covering it up from both the president and the American people like nobody thought was possible,” Trump said. 

There have been multiple reports of Beijing accessing US voter registration data, and an intelligence report declassified in 2022 found that “Chinese officials analyzed multiple US states’ election voter registration data,” but the number of affected Americans has never before been reported.

Trump further revealed the Chinese government’s strategy against the United States dating back to mid-2019, which he said “was focused on undermining domestic confidence in the US president.” 

“They wanted to just make you sound like your president wasn’t so hot, when actually your president has done a great job,” he said. “And they did everything possible to do exactly that.”

The president also highlighted “raw intelligence” obtained by the FBI in 2020 that detailed China’s “attempt to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden.” 

Trump claimed the Chinese election interference plots were “buried by rogue bureaucrats” and, during his first term, kept out of his daily presidential briefings. 

“One email among intelligence analysts admitted that they had ‘deliberately massaged the presidential daily briefing to withhold information regarding Chinese activities related to the election,’” Trump said. “ Another official inside the FBI wrote that she was running ‘a shadow government’ to keep intelligence about China’s election meddling from becoming known.” 

Indeed, a document in a batch of declassified files released by the White House shows that an FBI official named Nikki Floris wrote in a chat log to a colleague that “i’m basically running a shadow government across the FBI at this point” as the pair discussed preparing the president’s daily brief (PDB).

Floris, who lists Microsoft as her current employer on her LinkedIn page, mentioned that an intelligence information report on China was “recalled” when her counterpart, whose identity was redacted, asked for the document.

The date of the conversation is difficult to determine because the file bears a date of “9-28-25” when the context heavily suggests it came from before or shortly after the 2020 election — as the colleagues discussed an anticipated November-December “ghost town” and their own 2021 vacation plans.

Other files in the cache show disagreement on what to include in the PDB being presented to Trump at the time, as he was alleging election irregularities.

A Nov. 20, 2020, email from an employee in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence noted “a Small update from NSA below. Their PDB isn’t going to tie to the election? The mind boggles.” An earlier email in the thread from an NSA official said: “We have deliberately massaged our one pending PDB to avoid any direct links to the election.”

An indignant DNI official wrote that they believe information “makes it clear China has been caught conducting election influence. At least that’s how it was described to us…. But as you scroll up, note that NSA is ‘deliberately massaged [sic] our one pending PDB to avoid any direct links to the election.’”

Trump said administration officials discovered some of the material in “burn bags” that were supposed to be destroyed.

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“[T]he findings are stunning,” Trump marveled, before announcing that he was directing the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the CIA to “investigate how and why such crucial information was hidden, to fire those involved in the cover-up, and to file criminal charges if appropriate against these people.”

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) earlier confirmed Thursday that Trump’s speech would have to do with election security and China in a post to X.

“I was just briefed by the White House on what to expect this evening. I would encourage every American to tune in tonight to the President’s speech,” he said. “This may be the most important Oval Office address since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The time for complacency with China is over.”

The president has long alleged that widespread voting fraud cost him the 2020 election.

However, evidence has yet to be presented suggesting fraud was committed on the scale necessary to deny Trump a second consecutive term.

Trump has railed against mail-in ballots, “inaccurate” voting machines and delays in the vote-counting process since his loss to Joe Biden in 2020.

The president has signed multiple election integrity-focused executive orders in his second term aimed at pressuring states into providing better security for their elections and tightening absentee-ballot rules.

Trump has also deployed law enforcement and intelligence agencies to re-investigate claims about the collection and tallying of votes in 2020, specifically in Georgia, which narrowly went for Biden in 2020 before swinging back to Trump in 2024.

Earlier this year, he directed former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to supervise an FBI search of an election center in Fulton County, Ga. — where the president and 18 co-defendants were infamously indicted in 2023 over an alleged effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the Peach State.

More than 600 boxes of 2020 ballots were seized in the January search.

More recently, Trump has raised red flags about the results of last month’s primary elections in California, repeatedly pointing to how long it took officials to count the votes.

The president called the Los Angeles mayoral primary “rigged” and “crooked” after Republican candidate Spencer Pratt, who came in second-place on election night, was pushed into third-place and out of contention five days after polls closed.

Trump’s speech comes as the Save America Act, an election security bill he has demanded lawmakers prioritize, languishes in a legislative logjam on Capitol Hill.

The Trump-backed bill would require proof of US citizenship (such as a passport or birth certificate) to register to vote in federal elections, among other election reforms.

Efforts to ram it through the Senate have consistently failed due to a Democratic filibuster and reservations from some Republicans.

The prime-time speech was Trump’s third address to the nation in second term.

Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, ripped the president for using the platform to relitigate the results of the 2020 election rather than focus on the future.

“He’s scared to death that he will lose in 2026, and so he’s trying to change the subject,” Schumer (D-NY) told reporters before the president delivered his remarks.

“The bottom line is, if Trump wants to win the American people over, instead of the bulls—t that he’s peddling about 2020, he ought to focus on lowering people’s costs, getting rid of the chaos in administration, getting rid of the corruption,” the Democratic leader added.

Republicans will be defending their slim majorities in the House and Senate in Nov. 3 midterm elections.

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