Donald Trump might just have revealed that there was foreign election interference in the 2020 presidential election – but not the kind he was trying to prove.
On Thursday evening, the US president slurred his way through a rambling and incoherent speech in which he baselessly accused China of interfering in the 2020 election.
During the primetime address – which conveniently came shortly after a Washington Post-Ipsos poll revealed Trump’s approval rating was at just 37 per cent – the Republican repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud and foreign interference in the 2020 election which he lost to Joe Biden.
READ NEXT: Hunter Biden trolls Donald Trump by nominating him for Nobel Peace Prize
The US intelligence community has unanimously concluded there is no evidence of Chinese interference in the 2020 election.
But, to try and prove his conspiracy theory, Trump declassified hundreds of intelligence files which were then posted on the White House website.
However, in the process, he may well have revealed something he’d rather wasn’t in the public domain – it was actually Biden’s presidential campaign that was the victim of foreign meddling.
Some documents released state that Russia tried to “orchestrate a high-profile corruption scandal” and push narratives about “voter fraud resulting from mail-in balloting.”
the document entitled NICA (National Intelligence Council Assessment) Foreign Threats To 2020 US Election reads: “We assess that Russia is using a range of measures primarily to denigrate former Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia establishment. For example, it is directing or encouraging proxies to spread claims about Vice President Biden. Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media.”
The HuffPost reports that a file entitled CIA Wire Memo Summer 2020 also revealed that the intelligence community “detected Chinese state-sponsored cyber actors targeting the former Vice President’s presidential campaign, probably to gather intelligence that could enable future operations.”
The ‘former Vice President’s presidential campaign’ means Biden’s 2020 presidential run.
Reacting on social media, journalit Mehdi Hasan wrote that Trump has “just confirmed ‘Russiagate’ was real.”
Democrat lawmaker Chris Jackson wrote: “Donald Trump released these documents tonight believing they would finally prove the 2020 election was rigged against him.
“Instead, his own release reinforced the exact opposite: Russia interfered to damage Joe Biden and benefit Donald Trump.”
He added: “Trump tried to expose a conspiracy against himself and accidentally exposed the operation that benefited him. Absolute, breathtaking incompetence.”
You can find all of the declassified documents on the White House’s website.