Trump accuses China of the biggest hack of US voter data in history. Beijing responds

US President Donald Trump, during a televised address to the nation delivered from the White House on Thursday evening, renewed his accusations of fraud and interference in the election, reiterating the allegations he previously held after losing the 2020 presidential election, to Democrat Joe Biden.

In his speech, Trump revealed that since the 2020 election cycle, the People's Republic of China has carried out a large-scale hacking operation that enabled it to illegally acquire files belonging to about 220 million American voters, describing the incident as "the largest hack of election data in history" and an unprecedented nightmare related to the security of the electoral process.

The US president confirmed his intention to declassify intelligence that he said exposed "shocking weaknesses" in the US electoral system, claiming that the seized sensitive data included names, contact information and party affiliations, and that the Chinese government was striving to defeat him at the expense of his rivals.

Accusations against intelligence and the "deep state"

Trump accused U.S. intelligence agencies of hiding information regarding the scale of what he called "malign Chinese interference," claiming that they were fully aware since 2020 of the hacking of voter registration files in multiple U.S. states, but preferred silence and obfuscation.

 Trump said that members of the "deep state" within the intelligence community deliberately suppressed and downplayed information, hiding the truth from the president and the American people in a way that no one thought possible.

Trump pointed out that Beijing not only hacked data in 2020, but also tried to undermine his first administration and election campaign, in addition to seeking to influence the 2018 midterm elections, exploiting its relationships with American companies to pressure them, as well as seeking to identify American journalists to push them to publish negative articles about him.

Attack on media and demands to withdraw licenses

Trump has called for the withdrawal of broadcast licenses from major television networks that have refused to broadcast his speech live at prime time, hinting that these channels may have been involved in attempts to manipulate the election process as part of a systematic scheme against his administration.

Trump stressed that the media, especially the ABC and NBC networks, use the billions of dollars worth of public airwaves without paying anything, arguing that such protest and fraudulent practices should be immediately met with strict measures to revoke their licenses.

The US president reiterated that Washington now enjoys global respect that it has never had before after two years of economic decline, inflation and an open border crisis, but said that the biggest remaining challenge is to ensure fair and honest elections.

Democratic opposition and decisive Chinese denial

Mira Rapp-Hooper, the former director of East Asia at the US National Security Council, criticized President Trump's remarks as "false" and unsubstantiated claims aimed at pressuring Congress to pass laws restricting access to vote ahead of November's midterm elections.

Previous assessments by U.S. intelligence services have suggested that Beijing ultimately chose not to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, which is completely contrary to Trump's latest account, at a time when recently declassified documents showed no real evidence of manipulation of the ballot results.

The Chinese embassy in Washington denied all these accusations in full and in detail, as an embassy spokesperson confirmed Beijing's strict commitment to the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, stressing that  the US elections are a purely internal affair decided by the American voters alone, and that China has not and will not interfere in this process in any way.