‘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’
President Donald Trump’s primetime speech Thursday revealing that American spy agencies suppressed evidence that China hacked into massive reams of voter data shows that not even the Commander In Chief has full transparency into their secret work.
The CIA confirmed the Chinese government hacked over 200 million files of voter registration data from more than a dozen states in 2020, and the FBI had raw intelligence that was buried before it could be verified about fake ballots for Joe Biden, but senior intelligence officials dampened the impact of this intelligence before it reached him in the Presidential Daily Briefing. The revelation may deepen the suspicions of many Americans that spy agencies constitute a Deep State unaccountable to outsiders, even the president — referred to in the intelligence community as “Customer #1.”
Senior officials in the CIA and the FBI privately expressed reluctance to elevate intelligence about Chinese hacking to Trump because he could use it to his advantage on the campaign trail, the speech and declassified documents revealed.
A senior FBI official working on foreign influence operations — just the sort of official who should have rung an alarm bell about Chinese access to sensitive American data — instead buried it. The official even referred to the power of the so-called “shadow government.”
“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,” Trump said. “Another official inside the FBI wrote that she was running a ‘shadow government.'”
“All they kept saying is that ‘this is the most secure election of all time.’ A standard, very pat line,” Trump said.
The new declassified materials were uncovered through the work of a task force helmed by journalist John Solomon. The task force includes the U.S. Intelligence Board and the declassified documents were reviewed by Trump’s intelligence chiefs.
Trump’s speech also alleges other Chinese influence operations, including the recruitment of American corporate leaders and bribing of journalists to hurt Trump’s election chances.
It’s not clear whether any of the actions by China tilted the 2020 election.
It is clear though that the new revelations add to the evidence that Trump faced unusual obstacles in the 2020 election, including the delay of the Pfizer vaccine until December 2020 and chaos in Fulton County, Georgia, including processing delays and mishandled absentee ballots.
Trump has fought to pass the SAVE America Act, an election integrity bill that would require proof of citizenship to vote, among other provisions, but it faces resistance from congressional Democrats and some Republicans.
The FBI and CIA didn’t respond to a request for comment.