In declassifying documents to show China has meddled in U.S. elections, Trump instead revealed it was Putin who tried to help him by hurting Biden in '20 election

Putin and Trump: How do their interests converge? (AP)

In a prime-time televised speech last Thursday, Donald Trump went to considerable pains to show he had declassified documents that prove China meddled in the 2020 election to help Joe Biden win and keep Trump out of office. China undermined his first administration, Trump said, and "they fought like hell not to have a Donald Trump win in 2020." China even worked against the Trump administration's efforts in the 2018 midterms, Trump said, encouraging business leaders to turn against the U.S. president and paying journalists large sums of money to write negative articles about him. The speech seemed to be an effort to provide support for Trump's longstanding complaint that the 2020 election was rigged against him. 

Now four days later, it's clear Trump's declassifying effort backfired spectacularly. Not only did the documents fail to support the president's claims regarding China but, in a case of someone not paying attention to the information being released. the documents showed it was Russia, not China, that actually was meddling. In what should surprise no one who followed Robert Mueller's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election (the one Trump  "won" over Hillary Clinton), the newly released classified docs show that Russian president Vladimir Putin again went to bat to HELP Trump in 2020. Putin and his associates did this by conducting a coordinated campaign to HURT Biden by spreading false information about his alleged ties to corruption involving Ukraine. It's all there in the documents that Trump himself declassified, with his name prominently listed in red ink.

All of this conjures up memories of steps William Barr, Trump's attorney general at the time, took to deceive the American public about actual findings in the Mueller report. Without Barr's intervention, many reasonably objective Americans likely would have understood that Putin set out to help Trump in 2016. After all, we now know that Putin tried to help Trump in 2020 -- and Trump seemingly tried to cover it up in last week's speech by claiming China sought to hurt him. That leaves us with this question: Did Putin, perhaps with assistance from Elon Musk, help Trump win in 2024? That raises these even more important questions: Has Donald Trump ever honestly and lawfully been elected president of the United States? What damage have his dubious election victories done to our country and its global alliances, because of his own lack of interest in governance and the ineptness of loyalists with whom he has surrounded himself -- plus his determination to go his own way, with little or no respect for U.S. norms or the rule of law?

We will allow those questions to percolate for now and turn our attention to David Corn, of Mother Jones, who has details about how Putin's efforts to help Trump and hurt Biden in 2020 came to light. Under the headline "Trump's election-security speech: A good night for Putin; his China deflection covers for Russia," Corn writes:

On Thursday night, after days of buildup, Donald Trump delivered a speech on election security in which he suggested US elections were threatened by China. He repeatedly pointed to China and its purported efforts to hack voter and election data and to mount influence operations to foment anti-Trump sentiment. But he provided no proof of Chinese interference with US elections or of any voter fraud. And, perhaps more significantly, he left out a big piece of the picture: Russia. As Trump assailed US elections as totally rigged and lacking credibility—again, without offering any evidence of this—he fixated on Beijing. The connection was not clear. He seemed to be saying that China has been involved in subverting US elections, including the 2020 contest that he lost and that he has falsely insisted (ad naseum) was stolen from him. He denounced the supposed Deep State for having “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.” In 2020, though, the major culprit in terms of election meddling was not China, but Moscow.

Who says so? Trump’s own intelligence community.

The impression Trump left with many viewers last Thursday is that U.S. elections are slipshod affairs, with hardly any effective forms of oversight. That message was clearly sent and likely received by MAGA die-hards, Now we know, thanks to documents Trump himself declassified, that isn't quite so. And we also know that Putin, who can be a persistent fellow, has never given up on the idea pf helping Trump win the presidency and making sure he keeps it. What benefit does Putin see in this for himself? Many smart people have considered that question; some, such as American journalist and writer Craig Unger, have conducted deep research and produced well-received, best-selling books. But without William Barr's intervention, we probably would have a deeper understanding of how the interests of Putin and Trump are aligned -- and that likely would explain much of the mayhem that has transpired in Trump's second term. As Trump's speech proves, that relationship is negatively impacting the United States and world stability right up to this day. David Corn writes:

In August 2020, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a brief statement assessing foreign efforts to influence the ongoing presidential election. It noted that  intelligence agencies had concluded that China and Iran favored Trump’s defeat. But the statement provided no details on what, if anything, China and Iran were doing to thwart Trump’s re-election.

As for Russia, the statement was more direct. It said Moscow was “using a range of measures to primarily denigrate” Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrats’ presidential candidate. It noted that a “pro-­Russia” Ukrainian parliamentarian named Andriy Derkach “was spreading” false claims—alleging that Biden had engaged in corruption in Ukraine—to “undermine” his candidacy. It added, “Some Kremlin-­linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television.”

Asked about this intelligence assessment at the time, Trump said, “I don’t care what anybody says.”

Trump apparently did care because a short time later, his administration took a peculiar action, as Corn explains:

A month later, Trump’s Treasury Department sanctioned Derkach and called him “an active Russian agent for over a decade” and accused him of running an ongoing operation—by putting out bogus information about Biden—to discredit the Democrat. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin declared that “Derkach and other Russian agents” had employed “manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence” the US election.

Trump’s own administration was saying Moscow was actively interfering with the 2020 election.

Months after that contest, the US intelligence community released an assessment of “foreign threats” to the 2020 race. This is what it said about the Russian effort:

We assess that Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US. Unlike in 2016, we did not see persistent Russian cyber efforts to gain access to election infrastructure…A key element of Moscow’s strategy this election cycle was its use of proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence narratives—including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden—to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration. 

The report also evaluated Beijing’s involvement in the 2020 election: “We assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US Presidential election.” It added, “We did not identify China attempting to interfere with election infrastructure or provide funding to any candidates or parties.”

That’s a big difference. Russia ran an extensive operation to help Trump. China did not do much, if anything.

This suggests that as Trump stepped to the podium last Thursday night, he knew he was going to lie to the American people . It also makes one yearn for the "good old days" when you had some reason to trust what a president said. At this point, Trump doesn't seem interested in trying to convince anyone he is telling the truth. 

Corn takes a wide-angle view of events over the past 10 years and concludes that Trump is not serious about fighting election meddling by foreign interests. That suggests last week's prime-time speech was little more than an elaborate charade:

Trump has long denied that Putin intervened in the 2016 campaign and helped him win the White House—though various investigations, including a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee inquiry and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation concluded the Kremlin covertly aided Trump. In this speech, Trump made China the bad guy, ignoring Russia’s interventions in US elections.

If Trump were serious about combating foreign attempts to mess in US campaigns, he’d address Putin’s meddling. Yet that would never happen. This speech was meant to back up his unfounded and hysterical claim that US elections have been wracked with rampant fraud—which is why, in his deluded telling, he lost in 2020—and he sought to blame China for that. The real culprit, Russia, was MIA in the Trump narrative. 

TV networks shun Trump's elections speech, a wise move as prez focused on empty claims about China and sketchy tales of voter rolls packed with non-citizens

Members of Donald Trump's cabinet and staff listen to his speech on elections. (Getty)

 

Major U.S. television networks largely ignored or downplayed Donald Trump's speech last night about "fair and honest elections," and it proved to be a wise decision as the speech focused on allegations that China has meddled in U.S. elections, dubious claims that voter rolls are stuffed with non-citizens, and otherwise consisted mostly of Trump rehashing old, debunked grievances from 2020. In a report at Forbes, Sara Dorn writes:  

President Donald Trump said he is releasing classified material he claims shows China stole voter files starting in the 2020 election—making the allegations in a highly anticipated prime-time address as he has continued disparaging the U.S. elections system despite no evidence of widespread fraud.

Trump said the intelligence, gathered by a White House task force and the president's intelligence advisory board, shows China "carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history" by allegedly accessing 220 million U.S. voter files.

He alleged the so-called "deep state," a term widely used by MAGA Republicans to describe a purported secretive group of Democrats and high powered individuals, covered up China's involvement.

Was Trump dealing in new material? Not exactly, Dorn writes:

CNN reported the documents Trump referred to were reviewed and the allegations they contain have been known for years. . . . 

Trump made sweeping allegations discrediting the integrity of the U.S. elections systems, but stopped short of claiming the alleged Chinese meddling altered the results of the 2020 election. In fact, as we reported yesterday at Legal Schnauzer, Trump has admitted numerous times that he lost to Joe Biden in 2020 -- and those on the inside of the Trump organization told him the election was conducted in a "fair and square" manner.

Perhaps the speech's best quality was that it was short, 25 minutes. On the downside, it was heavy on allegations that reporters called "wild" or "unhinged" while being light on facts to back them up. In fact, Trump's content tended to produce eye rolls among watchers who actually know a thing or two about elections. From the Forbes report:

"It's the rantings of a pathetic, unserious person. . . the president knows virtually nothing about the American elections system," Rep. Joseph Morelle, D-N.Y. told C-SPAN. "He has no idea what he's talking about . . . there is no basis in fact to almost anything he said."

In other words, it was mostly "sound and fury, signifying nothing" -- typical Trump, although it was unusual in its brevity. Speaking of fury, Trump did not take kindly to being treated like an afterthought by major networks. According to a report at Associated Press, ABC, NBC, and CNN did not televise the speech live, and all generally relegated it to streaming platforms that typically draw a fraction of the audience that is drawn on the primary broadcast channels. CBS joined the speech late and cut out early. Ouch!

In the end, the content of Trump's speech might charitably be labeled a "nothing burger" while the networks claimed center ring by collectively flashing Trump -- long their nemesis -- an extended middle finger. A report at The Daily Beast focused heavily on the broadcast angle. David Gardner writes:

Donald Trump launched a blistering attack on America’s TV networks after they refused to screen his prime-time address detailing his crackpot claims of election rigging on Thursday night.

Furious at the snub, the president claimed that ABC and NBC should lose their broadcast licenses.

Even the networks that covered the speech live questioned the authenticity of Trump’s claims that America’s democracy-defining voting system was corrupted.

MAGA-coded CBS noted much of what the president said about election rigging was “false” before broadcasting most of the address from the White House East Room.

And Fox News admitted after the speech that it had been unable to confirm some of the claims Trump made about election abuse in the United States.

Speaking in a hoarse voice and reading from a teleprompter, Trump said: “In a rare move, NBC and ABC Fake news have both said that they would not cover this speech. They knew what it was about, but because of the fact that they don’t like the topic -- and they know how corrupt our system is, and they don’t want to reveal it.”

He angrily claimed that the networks and other media outlets were “part of a plot.”

Trump didn't fare any better on CNN, a network that often has been the target of his wrath and cutting remarks -- especially directed toward star reporter Kaitlan Collins. Gardner writes:

CNN, a favorite Trump target, blew off Trump’s grandstand speech as old news. The president insisted that declassified intelligence documents proved a pattern of fraudulent voting in elections.

But CNN’s Senior National Security reporter Zachary Cohen insisted: “None of the declassified information supports the claim that any previous election results—including the 2020 presidential contest that Trump lost—were manipulated by foreign interference or fraud in a way that would’ve changed the outcome." 

What about Trump's two primary claims (1) China has made a habit of meddling in U.S. elections; and (2) Large numbers of non-citizens have been found on voter rolls? An analysis from AFP and Yahoo! concludes that both claims are overblown:

Trump accused China of "the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China's illicit acquisition of 220 million US voter files."

He later claimed China attempted "to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden."

In the United States, however, voter files are largely matters of public record that states are required to maintain and which are regularly sold.

Trump long has made a habit of discounting conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies. He appears to be doing that again with the China claims. Here are POLITICO's conclusions regarding claims of hundreds of thousands of non-citizens on U.S. voter rolls":

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin says his agency found thousands of non-citizens on voter rolls in California and three other states as President Donald Trump prepared to renew his focus on election security with a speech to the nation.

DHS said a preliminary review uncovered tens of thousands of non-citizens on the voter rolls in New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania, and nearly two hundred thousand in California, according to a draft press release viewed Thursday by POLITICO.

The press release, which did not say whether there was any evidence of actual voting by non-citizens or explain how DHS reached its finding, was circulated inside the agency ahead of Trump's planned prime time speech in which he had promised to reveal "really big news" on election security.

It is also not clear how DHS obtained the data. While some voter registration records are publicly available, the Trump Justice Department has sued more than two dozen states across the U.S. for this type of data. All 15 judges who have ruled on those cases so far have rejected the requests as overly broad and without a clear purpose.

Asked for comment on the DHS press release, California Gov. Gavin Newsom's office referred to a statement on social media in which he noted that Trump has repeatedly made false claims about elections.

"California law is clear: You MUST be a U.S. citizen to vote state and federal elections," Newsom said on X. "Voter fraud is EXTREMELY RARE — and almost always committed by U.S. citizens."

The draft press release states that "reviews of the four states' records" found 190,832 non-citizens registered in California; 35,152 in New Jersey; 15,903 in Nevada; and 14,576 in Pennsylvania. It does not indicate that DHS found evidence that non-citizens cast ballots or explain how it reached a number that appears to be higher than previous reviews have found.

A federal judge recently found that the citizenship database created by DHS erroneously classified U.S. citizens in a large number of cases as ineligible voters.

One California political figure picked up on Republican hypocrisy and fired a zinger in Trump's direction:

California Democratic Assembly member Marc Berman, the author of several state election laws, said in a statement that DHS should focus on Trump's baseless conspiracy theories about his 2020 election loss.

"If Secretary Mullin wants to investigate voter fraud in America, I suggest he start with his boss," Berman said. "The only person who has been caught demanding that election officials make up thousands of votes is President Donald J. Trump, who begged the Georgia Secretary of State to 'find 11,780 votes' to steal the 2020 presidential election."

In prime-time speech, Trump reportedly plans to bore the nation with grievances about the 2020 election, even though he's admitted many times that he lost

(Central Oregon Daily News -- Facebook)

Donald Trump has announced plans to give a prime-time speech tonight on "free and fair elections," noting that it will include "really, really big news."  CNN doesn't seem convinced of the event's grandiosity, stating in an article that the speech is "setting up yet another high-profile opportunity for the president to dispute the results of the 2020 election he lost." In other words, it might just be a case of Trump going over tired, old ground.

It could be especially tired because Trump has admitted on a number of occasions that he lost in 2020, fair and square. In fact, we have written on the very subject several times here at Legal Schnauzer. (We will have specifics in a moment.)

A report from Mediaite and Yahoo! News says Trump is expected to focus on the battleground state of Georgia, perhaps even claiming U.S. Senators Jon Ossoff and Ralphael Warnock, both Democrats, were the beneficiaries of "illegitimate" victories.  Other reports claim Trump will point to foreign interference in U.S. elections.

As you might expect, Trump's plans drew fiery responses from Georgia's two senators. From the Mediaite/Yahoo! report:

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) wasted no time attacking a report claiming President Donald Trump plans to push long-debunked conspiracy theories about Georgia's 2020 election results in an upcoming speech, with Ossoff slamming the commander in chief as a fearful, 'failed president.'

Ossoff and Warnock were elected by razor-thin margins in the heated 2020 elections, with both races going to runoffs.

The pair helped Democrats take control of the chamber as Trump also lost the White House to Joe Biden — a defeat the president has yet to accept. (Actually, that's not quite true. Maybe Trump has not accepted the defeat in his own mind, but he has admitted he lost -- so any claim that he was cheated figures to come across as weak. We will have more on that in a moment.)

Trump announced on Monday via a Truth Social post that he plans to speak to the nation on Thursday evening, with subsequent reports claiming the president intends to push new allegations about the 2020 election, and the legitimacy of Ossoff and Warnock's victories.

Ossoff went on the offensive in a scathing X post, tying Trump's speech and conspiracies to the upcoming midterms and his own opponent, Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA).

"Donald Trump's spiral continues. The failed president, pocketing billions as he drives up prices, is afraid to lose the midterms," Ossoff wrote.

"So he will reheat debunked election conspiracy theories and tell bizarre new lies to deny his 2020 defeat and attack voting rights. This is a disaster for Trump puppet Mike Collins," he added.

"Already mired in scandal, Mike will now have to double down on conspiracy theories toxic in the General Election," Ossoff continued.

"From the start, Trump's obsession with Georgia elections revealed his fury that Black voters were instrumental to his defeat. I'm asking concerned citizens nationwide to join me and support our voter protection efforts in Georgia."

Warnock joined the fray, saying Trump is not just looking behind, but also looking ahead, adding that Georgians will not be easily intimidated by the president's tactics:

Donald Trump is at war with our democracy and Georgia is ground zero. But this is John Lewis’ Georgia. We are not intimidated. We are not moved. Mr. President, instead of attacking our democracy, why don’t you do something about the high cost of gas, housing, and health care?

"Donald Trump is trying to cast doubt on 2020 to justify interfering in 202," he added. "We see what he is doing and it will not work. Stay vigilant." 

As for claims about foreign interference, Mediaite and Yahoo! provide insights under the headline "Trump will use prime-time speech to claim newly declassified Intel reveals foreign plot in 2020 election":

President Donald Trump will reportedly use his prime-time address on Thursday night to push specific new claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

On Monday afternoon, Trump announced on Truth Social that he'd be giving a Thursday speech. The third-person post read:

Donald Trump will be making a Speech to the Nation on Thursday evening, at 9 P.M. Eastern. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

At the time, it was unclear what Trump would talk about during the speech. On Deadline: White House, MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace revealed Trump's speech would focus on the six-year-old election — citing a report from the network's Jake Traylor. Specifically, the president will reportedly point to newly-declassified reports he claims will show foreign interference in the 2020 election. She added:

Donald Trump appears to be taking his assault on the truth, and democracy, and American elections, to primetime. MS NOW is now reporting that Trump will deliver an address Thursday evening where he plans to unveil another round of lies about why he lost in 2020 to Joe Biden. This time, claiming that newly declassified reports reveal foreign interference in the election that his own government didn't know about at the time, lies that seemed to conveniently obscure that he was the President of the United States. All of his handpicked people ran every facet of the government in 2020. His handpicked Attorney General Bill Barr ran the Justice Department. His handpicked replacement for Jim Comey, Chris Wray, ran the FBI. Both of them have repeatedly and publicly debunked these lies that there was any foreign interference. 

Trump's claims about foreign interference are hopelessly vague, even by his standards. What country interfered in the 2020 election, and what did they expect to gain from it? Did they gain from it? Since Trump's team was in charge at the time, why did they let this happen? Was it gross incompetence, the kind that always seems to surround a Trump administration? Is Trump claiming that Denmark and Greenland joined hands in a nefarious plot to help Joe Biden beat Trump?

No one seems to know, and maybe it's just as well. If Trump is to claim he was cheated, even he doesn't seem to believe that. Following are four times where Trump has admitted he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. They come from our Legal Schnauzer post dated May 18, 2026. We invite you to click the links and check out the details. If Trump truly is trying to change his tune at this late date, he is even more pathetic than many of us thought:

They don't have much of anything, and it's nuttier when you understand that the man at the center of it all, Trump himself, has admitted over and over that he lost the 2020 election. Consider this from our post dated May 5, 2025, in which we noted that Trump used the occasion of Rudy Guiliani's hospitalization in an attempt to reignite claims he was cheated in the 2020 election . . . . 

What about the section I highlighted above as being of particular importance? In it, Trump is claiming Democrats "cheated on the Elections," an apparent reference to the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost to Joe Biden. Here is the key point: Trump now claims, and has been claiming for some time, that he was cheated in that election -- even though he already has admitted that he lost. Here are several examples where Trump said he knew he lost, usually using the term "by a whisker":

* NBC News: Trump admits in podcast appearance that he did not win the election against Joe Biden;

* The Guardian: Trump privately admitted to aides he lost the election, top aides testify;

* Common Cause: Eight times Trump knew he lost; 

* Mother Jones: Trump finally is admitting he lost the 2020 election.

After all of these times admitting that he lost in 2020, why did Trump use the occasion of Rudy Giuliani's hospitalization to change course and claim Democrats won by cheating -- which in his own words, he knows is not true? 

Is Trump counting on voters to forget, or ignore, all the times he admitted that he lost in 2020? That's the only reason I can come up with that Trump would be trying such a charade six years later.