Trump is trying to undermine confidence in the election, but the documents do not support his claims

The Trump administration has intensified its efforts to impose control over the country’s elections. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullen threatened local election officials with prison if they refused to cooperate with requests for voter data. This comes on the heels of the president’s prime-time speech in which he revived debunked claims about the integrity of the US election. White House correspondent Liz Landers reports.

Jeff Bennett:

Welcome to the News Hour.

The Trump administration is stepping up efforts to exert greater federal control over the country’s elections. Today, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullen threatened local election officials with prison if they refuse to cooperate with the administration’s requests for voter data.

It comes on the heels of President Trump using a prime-time speech to revive false claims about the integrity of US elections and call for more restrictive voting laws ahead of the November midterm elections.

For a closer look at what the president said and what the facts show, we turn to our White House correspondent, Liz Landers.

President Donald Trump:

No confidence, no greatness.

Liz Landers:

New claims about old injustices with little evidence to support them. In a prime-time speech, President Donald Trump attempted to influence the conversation about election security just months before the midterm elections.

Donald Trump:

Tonight, I am announcing the immediate declassification and release of critical intelligence that exposes horrific vulnerabilities in our electoral infrastructure.

Liz Landers:

Armed with newly declassified files, his central target was a familiar foreign adversary, China.

Donald Trump:

The People’s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest election data compromise in history, resulting in China illegally seizing 220 million US voter files.

Liz Landers:

The president painted a bleak picture of US election security, but a closer look at documents released by the White House reveals a different reality.

Through hundreds of pages of heavily redacted files, the intelligence community discusses China’s attempts to potentially influence the 2020 election, though they are often presented as potential risks, with no evidence that the attempts succeeded.

In fact, one declassified document explicitly states that — quote — “publicly available American voter registration information in six states was downloaded by the People’s Republic of China and withheld in 2022, long after the 2020 election.”

David Pecker, a former Justice Department lawyer who runs the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said Trump’s claims are false.

DAVID BECKER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR ELECTION INNOVATION AND RESEARCH: The truth is, it wasn’t a hack. As much as we may not like the fact that China is trying to obtain as much data as possible on Americans, voter rolls in the United States are public. There is a general list of electors in each state. It’s available for purchase. Sometimes, it’s free.

Liz Landers:

Mr. Trump also claimed that Beijing is conducting a coordinated campaign to target his political standing…

Donald Trump:

They fought hard so Donald Trump wouldn’t win, and for good reason.

Liz Landers:

…and shifted his focus to the apparatus of democracy itself.

Donald Trump:

They are vulnerable and can be easily hacked.

Liz Landers:

Baker said baseless conspiracies regarding foreign manipulation are inconsistent with U.S. assurances.

David Baker:

So, we’ve had all paper ballots in the United States since at least 2020. The only state that currently does not have paper ballots is Louisiana.

Liz Landers:

These ballots leave a physical trace that can be verified and reviewed by the voter, Baker added.

David Baker:

The voter has reviewed the ballot every time, which is why we know our vote count is correct. It’s not that we trust machines. Any machine can break down. Our machines undergo a very strict chain of control. They are not online.

Liz Landers:

The president did not stop at China. He also pointed to electronic voting machines, using a foreign example to warn of domestic vulnerabilities.

Donald Trump:

The CIA obtained reports of a specific plot to do a large count for the corrupt Maduro regime in Venezuela. And that’s exactly what happened, conspiring to digitally rig their country’s election in 2020, and that’s what they did.

Liz Landers:

But such efforts would only be possible if every step of the electoral process was under the control of the Venezuelan government, which is why the disclosed documents concluded that such efforts to manipulate vote totals would not succeed in the United States.

Trump also targeted immigration, linking border crossings directly to the ballot box.

Donald Trump:

According to a DHS review, state voter rolls and public records, they identified nearly 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote in federal elections.

Liz Landers:

The report did not mention how this number was arrived at.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullen was unable to say how many people, if any, were actually able to vote at a news conference today. The president used the speech to pressure Congress to pass the Save America Act, a sweeping voter ID and citizenship bill.

But federal databases and screening tools used to identify noncitizens have repeatedly been shown to be incorrectly identifying US citizens. Inaccurate information often arises when systems rely on outdated records or attempt to verify the citizenship status of naturalized Americans.

It collects false positives so often that a federal judge last month blocked the Trump administration from using it, adding that it indiscriminately combined and repurposed — quote — “the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data they knew was unreliable.”

The president’s repeated false claims serve one political goal, preemptively sowing doubt ahead of the November midterm elections. Despite all this, Baker says, the elections will go smoothly.

David Baker:

I am fully confident that the elections will be safe. It will also be convenient for voters to participate in it. Whoever the voters choose to serve, those people will hold office.

Liz Landers:

On the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Liz Landers.