President Donald Trump has spent years dismissing claims that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, but after delivering a primetime address on supposed election security shortcomings and releasing a trove of government documents this week, the president may have “unwittingly” admitted to Russian interference after all, Zeteo reported Sunday.
Trump used his address to push for the passage of his controversial voter ID bill known as the SAVE Act, and made a number of claims regarding the United States’ supposed election security shortcomings. Shortly after the address, Trump’s Homeland Security secretary, Markwayne Mullin, claimed that his agency identified 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote in the United States, though experts have said such claims lacked supporting evidence.
Among the trove of documents released by the Trump administration was a declassified National Intelligence Council document that actually supported claims that Russia had attempted to interfere in the 2016 election.
“President [Vladimir] Putin and senior Russian officials are overseeing efforts by proxies… to spread claims about former Vice President [Joe] Biden as well as Ukrainian politicians and alleged Ukrainian influence in the 2016 election,” the document reads, according to Zeteo.
Other documents released by the Trump administration further support claims that Russia not only attempted to interfere in the 2016 election, but continued to do so in 2020, and on behalf of Trump.
“One has to wonder if Trump even read the documents he thought were so important to reveal to the public. The document also adds something that may sound familiar: ‘Russian actors have circulated narratives about voter fraud resulting from mail-in balloting and called some U.S. primary voting processes ‘rigged’ by the Democratic Party,’” Zeteo’s analysis reads.
“It’s a claim that Trump himself has made an uncountable number of times, including Thursday night, when he said that ‘if you watched California and so many other places, mail-in ballots are inherently corrupt.’ Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly claimed that the notion of Russia interfering in U.S. elections was a hoax.”
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