WATCH: Trump claims large-scale Chinese compromise of U.S. voter data in national address

The Trump administration began releasing declassified intelligence documents on Thursday night proving years of election fraud and foreign interference, President Donald Trump claimed during an address of the nation. American elections were less secure than those in a third-world country, causing Americans to lose trust, but the newly released documents would expose the problems, the president said.

Records showed Biden-era intelligence officials knew of the security concerns and actively covered them up, the president insisted. Trump said he aimed to strengthen Americans’ trust in elections by telling them the truth and planned to release all documents collected by a White House transparency task force on the White House’s website for public consumption.

How much fraud or interference did the records document? The intelligence documents chronicled fraud from at least 2020 into 2026, Trump said. Trump claimed disclosures showed the Chinese Communist Party carried out what may have been the largest election data scheme on record and acquired 220 million voter files. China acquired sensitive voter data, including addresses, phone numbers, emails, and other information needed to register, Trump said. 

The president claimed intelligence also showed the Chinese attempted to undermine Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, along with the 2018 midterm elections. Trump also cited FBI intelligence that he said showed that China attempted to manufacture fake ballots for Biden in 2020, and that several foreign nations could access American voting machines. 

Records proved that federal leaders and former intelligence heads knew of the fraud and insecurity, yet suppressed the information and denied all fraud claims, Trump said. Officials knew, and instead of sounding the alarm and informing Congress, chose to bury the records, Trump said. He called on the FBI, the CIA, and other federal agencies to investigate their departments’ role in the fraud and discipline all employees involved. 

Trump also referenced documents chronicling what he characterized as a past voter fraud scheme in Michigan. Canvassers admitted during FBI interviews to signing registration forms in other people's names and submitting forms for people who didn’t exist, Trump said. Biden’s FBI knew about the scheme and chose to slow-walk the investigation as a means of killing it, he said. 

Trump went on to say that Homeland Security investigators identified at least 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote in federal elections. The real number is ever bigger since Democratic states won’t hand over voter rolls, Trump added. Honest and fair elections should be a nonpartisan issue, and officials needed to bolster electoral security before the upcoming midterms, he said. 

Have Democrats responded? Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., issued a statement Thursday night calling Trump’s speech a pathetic attempt to deny that he lost the 2020 election. He insisted that Americans were fed up with Trump’s policies and blamed him for skyrocketing costs and the war in Iran. He pledged that the SAVE America Act—legislation that would require voters to provide proof of citizenship—would never be passed and that Democrats would fight to prevent Trump from, as he characterized it, obstructing or interfering with future elections.