5 highlights from Trump's address to the nation: China threat to elections, voter fraud
2. Trump says China worked to ensure that he was not re-elected in 2020
Trump also said the cover-up was made more troubling by additional information showing that China engaged in other election-related activities intended to undermine his first administration and his 2020 campaign.
“CIA reporting explicitly stated, and I quote, ‘In mid-2018, the Chinese Communist Party’s policy was to leverage all domestic and foreign elements that were opposed to the U.S. president in an effort to reduce the U.S. president’s votes and make him resign or prevent his re-election,’” Trump stated. “Also in mid-2018, China was working to influence the results of the U.S. midterm elections and later the results of the 2020 presidential election.”
Trump also alleged that the Chinese government adopted a strategy of “undermining domestic confidence in the U.S. president” in mid-2019: “The strategy included efforts to use Chinese contacts with big U.S. companies to influence U.S. business leaders to turn against the president of the United States of America. The Chinese government sought to identify U.S. journalists who had reported negatively on the U.S. president and pay them large sums of money to write more negative articles about him, as many as they could.”
The president alleged that the Chinese government adopted a strategy in mid-2019 of "undermining domestic confidence in the U.S. president." That strategy, he said, included efforts to use Chinese contacts with major U.S. companies to turn American business leaders against him, as well as an attempt to identify U.S. journalists who had reported negatively on him and pay them to write additional negative coverage.
Trump said he believed China wanted him to lose the 2020 election because "they knew I was wise to them, charged them billions and billions of dollars worth of tariffs and built the strongest military anywhere in the world." Citing what he described as raw intelligence obtained by the FBI in 2020, Trump alleged that China's efforts even included an attempt to "manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden."
“Documents show that during this period, dozens of significant CIA and NSA reports about China’s election targeting were kept out of the presidential briefing,” he added. “One email among intelligence analysts admitted that they had ‘deliberately massaged the presidential daily briefing’ to withhold information regarding Chinese activities related to the election. Another official inside the FBI wrote that she was running ‘a shadow government’ to keep intelligence about China’s election meddling from becoming known.”
The president asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice, the FBI and the CIA to “investigate how and why such crucial information was hidden, to fire those involved in the coverup and to file criminal charges if appropriate against these people.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
