WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump resurrected long-debunked claims about fraud and foreign interference in the 2020 election, alleging in an address Thursday that China stole millions of voter files and suggesting Venezuela could manipulate American voting machines.
The White House declassified intelligence documents as Trump doubled down on his assertion that the election he lost to Joe Biden was "stolen," which has never been substantiated.
More than 60 lawsuits failed to uncover fraud capable of changing the 2020 result, while elections officials and members of Trump's own administration repeatedly rejected his claims.
Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, told AFP that Trump's speech consisted mostly of "recycled and debunked claims."
"What Trump did not do was even purport to show a single ineligible voter voted in the 2020 election, or that any voting machines were actually compromised," he wrote on his blog.
Here is a fact-check of some of Trump's claims:
- DATA COMPROMISED BY CHINA -
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.
A declassified March 2021 report from the country's leading...
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump resurrected long-debunked claims about fraud and foreign interference in the 2020 election, alleging in an address Thursday that China stole millions of voter...