US President Donald Trump resurrected long-debunked claims about fraud and foreign interference in the 2020 election, alleging in a July 16, 2026 primetime address 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 (archived here).
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 (archived here).
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" (archived here).
"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 (archived here).
Other experts agreed that Trump's claims were overstated and not supported by the documents published online, which contained mostly known information (archived here).
Democratic US Senator Mark Warner, a top member of the chamber's intelligence committee, said on MS Now that "virtually everything he talked about tonight, we have reviewed in a bipartisan way" (archived here).
Even controversial journalist John Solomon, who joined the White House in...
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