Fact-Checking Trump’s Election Fraud Claims
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President Trump uses a primetime address to claim the U.S. election system has been compromised. Plus, thousands of people complain about the SEC no longer requiring companies to post quarterly updates. And AI knows what you posted online, and so does your future employer.
You might think explicit images are private, but facial recognition software could enable an employer to identify you. Sure, you place that bet under a pseudonym, but is your screen name similar to one you've used in the past?
It's Friday, July 17th. I'm Daniel Bach for The Wall Street Journal, filling in for Luke Vargas. And here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. President Trump has used a national address to sow doubts about the 2020 election result. Speaking from the East Room, he raised allegations of foreign influence in President Biden's win, while heaping more pressure on lawmakers to pass his voter ID legislation ahead of the midterms where Republicans are at risk of losing their majorities in Congress. The Journal's Washington coverage chief, Damian Paletta, was watching the speech for us.
President Trump alleged a wide-ranging campaign by China in 2020 to interfere and impact the outcome of that presidential election.
The People's Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China's illicit acquisition of 220 million US voter files.
Now, we have known for years that China has tried to obtain voter rolls, and President Trump said that this operation was wide-ranging, and he also alleged that the U.S. intelligence community knew, or at least some people in the U.S. intelligence community knew about this scale, and that he claimed this information was withheld from him by people that he said were in the deep state.
Members of the deep state, very, very famous group of people, many cases, in our intelligence agency work to actively suppress and downplay information about the extent of China's sinister election meddling. covering it up from both the president and the American people like nobody thought was possible.
Now, he did not provide any evidence that suggests that they did impact the outcome of the election or that they did anything to manipulate votes or that they actually cast votes. But he wanted the American people to know that he believed that there was new information that he has declassified that shows that the U.S. government, or at least some within the U.S. government, believed that China's motives here were very nefarious and that they were trying to tilt the scales, or they wanted to tilt the scales, to help Joe Biden win the election over President Trump.
In response to Trump's speech, a spokesman at the Chinese embassy said China has never and will never interfere in U.S. presidential elections. A U.S. intelligence assessment from 2021 determined with high confidence that Beijing did consider an influence campaign but did not deploy it, opting instead to prioritize stability in its relationship with Washington. Here's Damian again.
There have been many reviews done by Republican states and Democratic states that have disputed his allegation that the 2020 election was stolen. And by putting these documents out there, some of them are partially redacted, but he believes that putting these out there, it could sow doubt in the American public's view about the safety and security of American elections. And that brings us to where he wants to go next.
Tomorrow, the Secretary of Homeland Security will hold a briefing to outline his department's recent work confirming cyber vulnerabilities in our electronic voting systems. They are bad.
The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Mark Wayne Mullen, is pretty new to the job, and this will be a big moment for him to either make Americans feel safer, the election system is airtight, or perhaps he's going to show that there are some vulnerabilities and weaknesses that states need to address.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–5:08
2
What did President Trump allege in his July 17 speech about foreign interference in the 2020 election?
5:08–8:13
3
How did WSJ’s Damian Paletta fact-check claims about China obtaining US voter files?
8:13–11:17
4
What evidence did Trump present and how did intelligence agencies respond to his allegations?
11:17–13:30
Speakers
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