Newly released intelligence records show federal agencies treated the targeting of voter-registration systems as interference in election infrastructure, supporting President Donald Trump’s claim that China’s acquisition of data on 220 million American voters represented a serious national security breach.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Declassified U.S. intelligence records show that federal agencies regarded the targeting and theft of voter-registration information as a form of election interference, undercutting claims that China’s reported acquisition of data on 220 million American voters was merely routine access to commercially available information.
The records released by President Donald Trump describe election interference as activity aimed at the technical systems used to administer elections, including voter registration, ballot casting, vote counting and the reporting of results.
“Election interference is a subset of election influence targeted at the technical aspects of the election, including voter registration, casting and counting of ballots and reporting of results,” an October 2020 National Intelligence Council report stated.
That definition places the compromise of voter-registration files squarely within the intelligence community’s established understanding of election interference, even when there is no allegation that voting machines changed ballots or altered final totals.
The issue returned to public attention after Trump announced Thursday that China had obtained files containing information on approximately 220 million U.S. voters.
The data reportedly included names, addresses, telephone numbers, party affiliations and other personal or political information.
Trump did not claim in the speech that voting machines had switched votes. His argument focused instead on the national security and election-integrity implications of a foreign adversary acquiring an enormous collection of voter data.
The White House subsequently released dozens of declassified election-integrity documents containing partially redacted intelligence findings.
Those records included information concerning nearly 278,000 noncitizens reportedly registered to vote in federal elections and details involving a 2020 FBI investigation in Michigan that was allegedly delayed.
The disclosures prompted sharply different reactions from those seen in earlier foreign voter-data breaches.
When Chinese hackers obtained information from millions of British voter records, news organizations and government officials described the breach as dangerous foreign interference.
The Biden Justice Department announced in 2024 that China was responsible for hacking voter information in the United Kingdom, despite the fact that portions of British voter-registration information are available through lawful commercial channels.
The British government said the theft of roughly 40 million voter records amounted to “malicious” election interference, according to the BBC’s account of the breach.
American authorities took a similar position after foreign actors obtained much smaller collections of U.S. voter data.
Federal officials reported that Russia and Iran acquired voter information during the 2020 election period.
In 2021, the Justice Department charged two Iranian nationals accused of accessing approximately 100,000 voter records from a single state. Prosecutors alleged that their actions formed part of a criminal effort to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.
Those earlier cases demonstrate that the availability of some voter information through public or commercial databases does not eliminate the security consequences of a foreign government obtaining it through illicit means.
Security specialists have said that limited information legally sold by states or commercial providers is not equivalent to a foreign intelligence service acquiring a comprehensive national database containing detailed personal and voting-related information.
The intelligence records released by Trump indicate that U.S. agencies themselves recognized that distinction.
By 2022, the National Security Agency had reportedly become increasingly concerned about China’s exploitation of voter data and assigned a cyber-network exploitation specialist, or CNE, to the issue.
A CNE designation generally refers to an individual or unit involved in hacking, cyberespionage or the theft and exploitation of digital information.
The assignment indicated that the intelligence community viewed China’s possession and potential use of voter data as a cybersecurity and national security concern rather than a routine collection of public records.
A report describing how China obtained the U.S. voter information said Trump’s announcement was supported by the declassified documents released by the White House.
The significance of the breach does not depend on proof that China changed votes or determined the outcome of an election.
Former CIA operations officer Rick de la Torre said dismissing the compromise because voter information is sometimes commercially available ignored the ways a foreign adversary could exploit a large and detailed database. His remarks were reported by Just the News.
“Of course, this is election interference,” de la Torre said. “With that information, with that data, you know the Chinese government can exploit it. They can target specific individuals. They can do all kinds of things. They could request ballots. They could change people’s identifications. They know now how they vote. They know what their political parties are. They know how often they vote.”
He compared the incident to a hostile government stealing confidential personnel records from the U.S. military.
“Imagine if China hacked into the Pentagon and stole every military service member’s personnel file,” de la Torre told Just the News. “You know, you wouldn’t say, ‘Oh well, that’s not really a big deal. That’s not a threat from a national security standpoint.’ You know, that’s absurd.”
The voter information could potentially support targeted influence operations, identity fraud, ballot-related deception, intimidation campaigns or efforts to undermine public trust in election systems.
A foreign government could also combine voter records with information obtained through other breaches to build detailed personal profiles of elected officials, campaign workers, government employees or politically active citizens.
Mike Davis, a former senior attorney for the Senate Judiciary Committee, said media organizations had failed to inform the public adequately by minimizing the reported breach.
He also argued that intelligence officials who withheld or altered information concerning the Chinese activity should face criminal scrutiny.
“They obstructed, and they conspired to provide doctored evidence to the President of the United States about a foreign invasion of our elections, and they must be held accountable. They must be arrested. They must be charged,” Davis said.
The declassified documents reportedly include evidence that analysts and officials withheld intelligence about Chinese activity from Trump and Congress.
Some records describe FBI officials claiming they had created a “shadow government,” while National Security Agency officials allegedly “massaged” presidential intelligence briefings to keep certain findings from reaching Trump.
Rep. Laurel Lee, R-Fla., said she was never informed about the Chinese acquisition of voter records while serving as Florida’s secretary of state from 2019 through 2022.
As the chief election official of one of the nation’s largest battleground states, Lee said the lack of notification was significant.
She called Trump’s disclosure “a big deal.”
“There are a number of different components to conducting good elections,” Lee said Monday on the Just the News, No Noise television program. “Of course, we have our voting tabulation systems, but we also have to maintain voter rolls, public information, public-facing websites. And all of these things are things that can be targeted by our foreign adversaries in their attempt to either interfere with our process and procedure or affect voter belief and confidence in our system.”
Her comments emphasized that election security involves more than voting machines and ballot tabulators.
Voter-registration databases, election websites, public reporting systems and administrative networks can all become targets for foreign governments seeking to disrupt procedures or weaken confidence in the process.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., also said the government must act quickly to improve the protection and verification of voter information.
Issa pointed to the SAVE Act as one measure he believes would strengthen election safeguards.
“There is still a lot of work to be done. Passing the Save Act would certainly make a big difference,” Issa told Just the News. “At the end of the day, there will be no question at all elections, the outcome, will be in doubt unless we pass it.”
“And I think the other half of it is there’s the actual corruption, where we found example after example, including China stealing registered voter names and other manipulation, but it’s more than that. It’s the confidence of the American people. That’s why the president’s pushing to get a verifiable system through the Save Act, and we’re still hoping to get it done for this election,” he added.
The dispute is partly rooted in an apparent change in how intelligence officials described Chinese election activity before and after Trump left office.
According to the newly released material, intelligence agencies knew in 2020 that Chinese actors had obtained voter-registration data but did not characterize the activity publicly in the same manner later used under the Biden administration.
By 2021, officials began describing similar Chinese actions as possible election influence.
An intelligence officer highlighted that reversal in a Dec. 23, 2021, email discussing a report on Chinese cyberactivity.
“Take a minute a read through this report,” the officer wrote. “It cites some of the same intel and logic used in 2020 to say that these same units were not engaged in election influence but were instead only issue focused, to now argue that China IS influencing the [redacted election.]”
The email suggests that the underlying intelligence had not materially changed, but the interpretation presented by the agencies had.
Frontline analysts reportedly knew before the 2020 election that China had obtained voter information and continued to exploit it afterward.
The new records indicate that officials also understood that the theft met the government’s technical definition of election interference.
The unresolved question is why those conclusions were not fully presented to Trump, state election officials or Congress at the time.
The breach’s potential effect on the outcome of the 2020 election remains separate from whether the activity constituted interference.
No proof presented in the documents establishes that China changed ballot totals, altered tabulation systems or directly determined the winner.
The intelligence community’s own definition, however, does not require that votes be successfully changed.
Targeting voter-registration infrastructure, stealing voter files or attempting to exploit the technical administration of an election can qualify as interference even when the effort fails to change the final count.
That was the standard applied when Iranian hackers obtained 100,000 U.S. voter records and when Chinese actors acquired millions of British voter files.
Applying the same standard to the reported theft of information involving 220 million American voters would classify the Chinese activity as a large-scale election interference operation.
The declassified records therefore support Trump’s central claim: Foreign acquisition of voter-registration data is not insignificant simply because portions of that information may be lawfully available elsewhere.
The scale of the collection, the means through which it was acquired and the ability of a hostile government to combine and exploit the information determine the national security risk.
The documents also raise new questions about whether federal intelligence officials minimized or concealed evidence of Chinese interference during the 2020 election period.
Congressional investigators are likely to examine who knew about the breach, when they learned of it, why state election officials were not alerted and whether presidential intelligence products were altered to exclude or soften the findings.
The broader issue now extends beyond the original compromise.
The handling of the intelligence has become part of the continuing debate over transparency, political influence inside federal agencies and public confidence in the nation’s election-security system.
Original article
Comments