Trump Releases Documents Revealing “Unprecedented Election Security Nightmare” During Address To The Nation

on Jul 16, 2026 • Updated Jul 16, 2026

In the evening of July 16, President Trump issued an Address to the Nation, speaking on election integrity. (Photo credit: White House / YouTube)

While speaking with reporters on July 14, President Donald Trump said his Address to the Nation on Thursday, July 16, would feature “really, really big news,” adding, “Our country has to shape up.”

Further, Trump said, “Without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country.”

In the evening of July 16, Trump delivered his Address to the Nation, speaking on election integrity and presenting “evidence” of attempted election interference by China.

He also alleged that there was a coverup within the United States Intelligence Community to hide this reported election interference.

During his remarks, Trump tried to present a case to America on why he believes this is a high priority issue ahead of the midterm elections this November.

Saying that there is a “major challenge that we must urgently address,” Trump said, “No country can be great without fair and honest elections.”

He then announced the release of several declassified documents of “critical intelligence” that he says reveals “shocking vulnerabilities” in the United States voting infrastructure.

Trump said the authenticity of the documents and findings are “fully confirmed.”

The Claims Made On Election Integrity During Trump’s Address To The Nation

Going into the midterms, the stakes are high for the Republican majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate that has coincided with the start of Trump’s second term in office.

Trump began by detailing several of his accomplishments as the 47th president, citing zero illegal immigrants crossing the border; the success of tax cuts resulting from the One, Big, Beautiful Bill; and the start of the Trump Accounts program, assisting families investing in the future of their children.

He then pivoted to the primary subject of his national address, revealing what he says newly declassified evidence indicates was an elaborate conspiracy perpetrated by China to impact the results of elections in the United States.

This evidence, he says, is being made available to the American public, in keeping with his landmark releasing of documents on an array of other matters, including UFOs, the Epstein files, and more.

“The purpose in disclosing this information is not to weaken confidence in elections, but to earn that confidence by confronting vulnerabilities and correcting them very, very quickly,” Trump said of the election integrity documents.

Beginning in 2018, ahead of the midterms that year, China allegedly began working to interfere in the elections in the United States.

During the 2020 election cycle, China carried out “what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history,” with China allegedly seizing 220 million U.S. voter files.

Trump said the data acquired by China was used for “nefarious” endeavors.

Following the Nov. 3, 2020, Election Day, Trump — who was serving as the 45th president amid the start of the COVID-19 pandemic that year — led several calls for recounts as results gradually rolled in.

Slow ballot tabulations in several states occurred, in part, due to the high frequency of mail-in ballots.

Recounts in several states led to varying degrees of shifts in percentage leads by Trump and his Democrat challenger and eventual successor, Joe Biden.

Continuing his July 16 Address to the Nation, Trump said members of the “Deep State” within the American intelligence agencies perpetrated a coverup of the election voter files being seized by China, which Trump claims were “bought, stolen, or hacked” in at least 18 states.

“Those who were responsible for sounding the alarm, instead, kept the information secret and hidden,” Trump said of the situation during the 2020 election.

He noted:

“Documents show that during this period, dozens of significant NSA and CIA reports about China’s election targeting were kept out of the presidential briefings. These were briefings I would get almost every day — everything was kept out that was of importance.”

Trump added, “One e-mail among intelligence analysts admitted that they had ‘deliberately massaged the presidential daily briefings to withhold information regarding Chinese activities related to the election.”

One of the most pointed claims made by Trump regarding domestic interference in elections concerned “burn bags,” which he says were “used to destroy information given by President Barack Hussein Obama.”

Due to “gross incompetence,” these officials did not burn these documents, allowing for them to be discovered by the current Trump administration.

“For many years, Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure, including the electronic voting machines and ballot-counting systems — dishonest, almost all,” Trump stated, adding that the government has “long known” of these vulnerabilities allowing for elections to potentially be compromised by foreign nations.

On a big picture level, Trump said this amounts to an “unprecedented election security nightmare.”

Moving forward, Trump said he is requesting that FBI Dir. Kash Patel investigates the matter, adding that he has been ordered to work with the Department of Justice to bring people involved in the alleged plots against elections in the United States to justice.

The 18 states that Trump says had election data compromised in the 2020 election are in the process of being notified by the Trump administration.

Trump added, “We can never be bought, we can never be hacked, and we can never watch a stolen election again.”

Tomorrow, July 17, DHS Sec. Markwayne Mullin will give a press conference on the Department of Homeland Security’s work to confirm “cyber vulnerabilities in our electronic voting systems.”

Turning to an immediate remedy, Trump urged Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which is detailed further, below.

Visit the White House website to access the files on election integrity, here.

The files outline the following, going from January 2020 to June 2026:

Vulnerabilities in America’s electronic voting and ballot-counting systems;
China’s reported acquisition and exploitation of American voter data;
Michigan voter-registration investigation; and
Intel on noncitizens on state voter rolls.

Near the conclusion of his remarks, Trump called out both NBC and ABC for choosing not to broadcast his Address to the Nation, saying that fair and honest reporting is necessary to help combat issues like election interference.

He also said that NBC and ABC’s broadcast licenses should be revoked.

Watch Trump’s July 16 Address to the Nation, here:

Trump Pushes For The SAVE America Act

The remedy, he says, would be for the Senate to follow the House of Representative’s lead in passing the SAVE America Act, with SAVE being an acronym for Safeguard American Voter Eligibility.

“Congress must pass the SAVE America Act,” Trump said. “The only reason you wouldn’t do it is you want to cheat because your policies are so bad and your candidates are so pathetic that you can’t get away and can’t get elected any other way.”

Making the case for the reforms that would accompany the passing of the SAVE America Act into law, Trump’s Address to the Nation looked back to the 2020 election.

If the SAVE America Act is approved by the Senate, citizens hoping to cast a ballot would be required to present a government-issued ID before registering to vote.

The bill would also limit access to mail-in ballots, with disability and military service being exceptions, according to the SAVE America Act.

On July 15, the House of Representatives voted 217-209, passing the SAVE America Act as an attachment to an appropriations bill providing funding for the State Department.

Now, it awaits deliberation by the Senate.

This is a developing story.