President Donald Trump began an address to the nation Thursday evening at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time.
Watch live coverage and analysis of his speech from Scripps News:
President Trump began with a review of administration priorities, including crime-reduction efforts and a focus on tax and tariff policies.
But "We still have a major challenge that must be urgently addressed, because no country can be great without fair and honest elections," he said.
He called for an election system where cheating and interference are "not just difficult, but virtually impossible."
Trump announced he would declassify intelligence that purported to show "shocking" vulnerabilities in U.S. election infrastructure. The documents, he said, would be published on the White House website.
Scripps News is reviewing the documents as they are released.
Trump alleges Chinese influence in the 2020 election
President Trump alleged that during the 2020 election cycle, China illegally acquired hundreds of millions of U.S. voter files, which included names, addresses, and political affiliations.
Trump claimed members of the U.S. intelligence agency worked to obscure the extent of the compromised data.
"They did not disclose to me as president or to anyone else, and to the best of our knowledge, they did not inform Congress," he said.
President Trump alleged the documents also show China took other steps to infiltrate and influence U.S. companies, and sought to influence media reporting and even briefings to President Trump that related to election security.
President Trump did not provide concrete evidence or proof that China's actions caused material changes to the U.S. election process or outcomes.
Voting machine security
"For many years, Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure," including electronic voting machines," President Trump said.
He said his administration would release documents that showed foreign nations and groups had the ability to modify the behavior and information collected by electronic voting machines.
"This is a cyberthreat aimed at the very heart of our democracy," he said.
Voter registration fraud
President Trump said files would be released that purported to show a concentrated voter fraud operation in Michigan.
"Tonight I'm asking the FBI director to ensure that the matter is fully investigated," President Trump said.
Administration wants an overhaul of election security
President Trump concluded his speech by calling on Congress to pass a major election reform bill that is currently stalled in the legislature.
The SAVE America Act would require all voters nationwide to show voter ID at the ballot box. It would also require Americans registering to vote to show documents in person proving their U.S. citizenship. The bill would sharply limit voting by mail, allowing only a short list of excuses for not voting in person — including illness, disability, military deployment, or travel on Election Day.
The Trump administration on Thursday launched a website that collected state-by-state records of how the Justice Department is working to "safeguard election integrity."
So far, many existing rules and norms around elections and voting remain in place.
The Supreme Court ruled earlier in July that mail-in ballots may be counted after Election Day deadlines, so long as they are postmarked no later than the day of the election.
And in April of 2023, Dominion Voting Systems received a $787 million settlement from Fox News following a lawsuit against the network over false election claims. Fox had claimed the voting machines were faulty and had been rigged to cause Donald Trump to lose the presidential election.
In its official statement, Fox acknowledged the court's rulings "finding certain claims about Dominion to be false."
Under the U.S. Constitution, the running of presidential elections is managed by the states.
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Trump remains focused on the 2020 election
The president frequently discusses the 2020 election and has repeatedly made allegations of fraud involving it. Those allegations have been repeatedly debunked, and no courtroom has sided with Trump over past allegations.
As recently as this month, the Trump administration has continued to investigate what it calls "irregularities" in the 2020 election process and outcome. The FBI has directed hundreds of agents to supplement its ongoing investigation into the 2020 election outcome in Georgia.
In January, the FBI seized ballots and other hardcopy records from Fulton County, which includes Atlanta. The case has since gone to court, where Fulton County is suing the Justice Department on Fourth Amendment grounds.
In Georgia, multiple hand-counts of the ballots confirmed Joe Biden's win in 2020.
And in the hours following the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, the U.S. Congress certified that Biden had won the 2020 presidential election and would assume office on Jan. 20, 2021.
