by WorldTribune Staff, July 17, 2026 Non-AI Real World News
In his address to the nation Thursday night, President Donald Trump outlined the declassification and release of multiple groups of documents which include assessments he said reveal “a cyber threat aimed at the very heart of our democracy.”
The documents, the president said, reveal vulnerabilities in election databases and other systems, including electronic voting machines.
“This data loss presents an unprecedented election security nightmare,” he said, referring to information on American voters and voting systems that were obtained by China.
China employs an army of state-backed hacking collectives to target U.S. infrastructure, including voting systems.
“Deep state” operatives in the U.S. are not only aware of this, but conspired to withhold intelligence reports outlining Chinese operations directed at election meddling were withheld from daily presidential briefings during his first term, Trump said.
The president on Thursday night said he is instructing the Justice Department, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and other top officials “to investigate how and why such crucial information was hidden, to fire those involved in the cover-up, and to file criminal charges if appropriate against these people.”
Investigative journalist Catherine Herridge, appearing on NewsNation’s “Katie Pavlich Tonight,” she had located a conversation within the documents declassified by Trump stating that one of the president’s daily briefs had been manipulated.
The heavily redacted email in question is dated Friday, November 20, 2020, and states: “We have deliberately massaged our one pending PDB to avoid any direct links to the election.” The redacted sender’s signature lists the emailer as a “Strategic Intelligence Analyst” and includes the words “China & North Korea Strategic Assessments.”
“I understand the whistleblower complaint alleged, and I think we’re now seeing it in the emails that there was an intentional effort to suppress intelligence about China’s influence operations,” Herridge said.
Herridge detailed a whistleblower’s account of the summer of 2020, during which officials allegedly found indicators of a Chinese influence operation intended to affect the outcome of the vote and public sentiment toward a presidential candidate. She recounted that the whistleblower’s alarm was suppressed.
“My understanding is that some of their reports were in officials’ own handwriting that they wanted everything out that could help President Trump in his reelection,” Herridge said. “So there was clear evidence of political and personal bias, and intelligence is supposed to be neutral.”
Herridge called China one of the “biggest collectors of data on the planet.” With the alleged 220 million voter rolls, compromised security clearance applications from 2015 and hacked health information, Herridge made the case that the data could be used for identity theft and even to recruit citizens for the data holders’ efforts.
“I think the larger question is why, if there was such a threat from this influence operation on a scale much more significant than Russia, Iran, and North Korea, why was it suppressed?” Herridge said, adding that the president’s position was that the suppression was for political reasons.
Having listened to Trump’s speech, none of the ppl who have been on the journey of uncovering the CIA and their nefarious activities were surprised by anything he said. I’d like to point out a few very important things:
1) the documents Trump declassified will expedite everything…— ColonelTowner-Watkins (@ColonelTowner) July 17, 2026
EMAILS: The CIA and the FBI were behind shutting down mention of China’s election interference and preference for Biden pic.twitter.com/aIIAvPvDLL
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) July 17, 2026
Trump outlined what he described as a multi-year influence campaign by China during his first term aimed at American companies and journalists.
“The cover up of this colossal security breach is even more disturbing in light of the additional information showing that China engaged in other election related activities to undermine my first administration and our 2020 campaign,” Trump said.
“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.”
