On Thursday, July 16th, 2026, President Trump gave a primetime address centered on the 2020 presidential election, continuing to assert — falsely — that the election was stolen from him. Sources told CBS News that part of his speech is expected to include new allegations regarding Chinese access to U.S. voter data.

Claims that China attempted to influence the 2020 election have been widely debated. However, U.S. intelligence agencies, including the National Intelligence Council, the Justice Department, and the Department of Homeland Security, have found no evidence that any foreign power, including China, interfered with ballots, vote-counting, or altered any technical aspect of the voting process.

A 2021 report by the National Intelligence Council stated, "We assess that it would be difficult for a foreign actor to manipulate election processes at scale without detection by intelligence collection on the actors themselves, through physical and cyber security monitoring around voting systems across the country, or in post-election audits."

Similarly, the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security reported in 2021 that there was "no evidence that any foreign government-affiliated actor prevented voting, changed votes, or disrupted the ability to tally votes or to transmit election results in a timely manner."

In early 2021, the majority of the U.S. intelligence community assessed that China did not try to influence the election outcome, concluding that neither a Biden nor Trump victory was "advantageous enough for China to risk getting caught meddling." While China has sought to influence U.S. politics broadly, it reportedly stayed on the sidelines during the 2020 race.

Separately, a report declassified in 2022 revealed that in April 2020, the National Intelligence Officer for Cyber found Chinese intelligence had "analyzed multiple U.S. states' … election voter registration data," though the report remains heavily redacted.

Caitlin Yilek, a politics reporter at CBSNews.com based in Washington, D.C., covered the story. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and The Hill and was a member of the 2022 Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship with the National Press Foundation.

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