by John Solomon
President Trump presented evidence last Thursday night that China had compromised and obtained 220 million American voter registration files but media have been downplaying it ever since.
When the Biden Justice Department announced that Chinese hackers had gotten their hands on Great Britain's publicly available voter files in 2024, American news media clamored with stories claiming it was a "dangerous" breach. The same, too, when U.S. officials announced Russia and Iran had hacked small numbers of U.S. voter files in 2020 and 2021.
The reason was simple: U.S. intelligence agencies believe the targeting and acquisition of voter registration files is an act of election interference. “Election interference is a subset of election influence targeted at the technical aspects of the election, including voter registration, casting and counting of ballots and reporting of results," an October 2020 National intelligence Council report on election interference explains.
In other words, the compromising of election voter registration data, is, by the definition of intelligence agencies, an act of election interference.
Nothing to see here, move along, legacy media now says
When President Donald Trump presented confirmed evidence last Thursday night that China had compromised and obtained 220 million American voter registration files, the news media swung 180 degrees in the opposite direction. They argued it was old news (it was not) and not a big deal because you can buy limited data in America related to voter registration commercially. According to security experts, that limited data accessibility is not the same thing.
The intelligence agencies in the very documents that Trump declassified and made public for his announcement show the voting integrity and security concerns.
In 2022, the National Security Agency became especially concerned that China had escalated its exploitation of voter data by assigning a "CNE." That's a person or unit who are hackers and cyberthieves. Legacy news media have ignored this fact, while center-right-leaning publications were not as quick to dismiss the accuracy or impact of the data breach.
The Washington Times reported that "Trump said during his primetime address on Thursday that the People’s Republic of China acquired 220 million U.S. voter files containing names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences, and other sensitive information. Shortly after the speech, the White House released to the public dozens of declassified documents containing partially redacted findings, including data showing nearly 278,000 noncitizens who are registered to vote in federal elections and details over a “slow-walked” 2020 FBI investigation in Michigan."
Great Britain’s voter files are commercially available in limited form like America's. But China got versions of the British that caused the Biden administration to indict China for hacking 40 million British voter files. According to the BBC, the British government called it “malicious” interference in their election.
In 2021, the Biden Justice Department indicted two Iranian hackers for accessing just 100,000 voter files from a single state where it is also commercially available. They were charged with criminally interfering in the 2020 election even though voter files are commercially available in limited form.
If China’s acquisition of 40 million files in Great Britain and Iran’s acquisition of 100,000 files in America were both charged as criminal election interference, it would seem the acquisition of 220 million voter files almost certainly would be considered by the intelligence community to be an act of interference.
At this point, what difference does it make?
Whether the data breach would have or could have flipped the election is beside the point. Experts interviewed by Just the News agreed. Former CIA operations officer Rick de la Torre called the news media's dismissal of Trump's claims "absurd."
"Of course, this is election interference," he added. "With that information, with that data, you know the Chinese government can exploit it. They can target specific individuals. They can do all kinds of things. They could request ballots. They could change people's identifications. They know now how they vote. They know what their political parties are. They know how often they vote."
"Imagine if China hacked into the Pentagon and stole every military service member's personnel file," he told Just the News. "You know, you wouldn't say, 'Oh well, that's not really a big deal. That's not a threat from a national security standpoint.' You know, that's absurd.
Mike Davis, a former top lawyer for the Senate Judiciary Committee, which dealt with major data breaches in the past, said the media is disserving the public by downplaying or ignoring what Trump reported and that the intelligence analysts who hid the data breaches from Trump and Congress years back could be prosecuted.
"They obstructed, and they conspired to provide doctored evidence to the President of the United States about a foreign invasion of our elections, and they must be held accountable. They must be arrested. They must be charged," Davis said.
Rep. Laurel Lee, R-Fla., was Secretary of State of Florida from 2019 to 2022 and said she was never notified as the election chief in one of the largest battleground states about China's acquisition of voter files. She said Trump's revelation was "a big deal."
"There are a number of different components to conducting good elections," she told the Just the News, No Noise television show on Monday evening. "Of course, we have our voting tabulation systems, but we also have to maintain voter rolls, public information, public-facing websites. And all of these things are things that can be targeted by our foreign adversaries in their attempt to either interfere with our process and procedure or affect voter belief and confidence in our system."
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., agreed and said Trump's rush to better secure voter data is essential.
Restoring confidence in an honest democratic process
"There is still a lot of work to be done. Passing the Save Act would certainly make a big difference," he told Just the News. "At the end of the day, there will be no question at all elections, the outcome, will be in doubt unless we pass it.
"And I think the other half of it is there's the actual corruption, where we found example after example, including China stealing registered voter names and other manipulation, but it's more than that. It's the confidence of the American people. That's why the president's pushing to get a verifiable system through the Save Act, and we're still hoping to get it done for this election," he added.
The president made no allegation in his Thursday speech that votes were flipped by machines. The intelligence memos he released back that up. But you don’t need flipped votes to have election interference. The illicit acquisition of voter files meets the textbook definition.
The suppression by intelligence officials for years of the voter file breaches and other Chinese malign actions is captured in documents showing FBI officials boasting they created a "shadow government" and NSA officials "massaged" the president's intelligence briefing to hide the evidence.
By 2021, after Trump left office, intelligence community officials marveled at the complete 180-degree pivot the Biden spy agencies did by suddenly suggesting China might be interfering in elections.
Nothing had changed. The voter data was known by frontline analysts to have been compromised the year before and was continuing. But all of a sudden, the language changed, a dynamic captured in this gem of an email from a top intelligence expert on election cyberactivities.
"Take a minute a read through this report," an intelligence officer wrote on Dec. 23, 2021. "It cites some of the same intel and logic used in 2020 to say that these same units were not engaged in election influence but were instead only issue focused, to now argue that China IS influencing the [redacted election."]
The intelligence community knew in 2020 that China had illicitly obtained voter files. They knew such an act met the definition of "election interference." They just suppressed it.
John Solomon is the CEO of Just the News but has taken a brief
leave of absence as the Editor-in-Chief so he can assist as an unpaid
special government employee identifying documents the Trump White House
can declassify for the American public.
Source: https://justthenews.com/accountability/media/us-intel-views-targeting-voter-data-election-interference-trump-claimed-memos
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