He Signed the Case Against Himself

Trump’s own declassified intelligence contradicts the story he’s been telling for nearly a decade.

President Trump says Russia’s role in American elections was a hoax. Yet the intelligence assessment he personally declassified reveals Russian actors sought to favor him in the 2020 election and promoted narratives about fraud tied to mail-in voting—the same narrative Trump invokes while urging Congress to pass the SAVE America Act.

For nearly a decade, President Trump has persistently called Russia’s role in American elections a hoax, a key element of “The Big Lie.” For years, he has also trumpeted the narrative that mail-in ballots are a threat to our elections. In his July 16th address, he set out to prove his perceived vulnerabilities to our elections citing activity from China and election rigging in Venezuela.

However, inside the package of more than 50 intelligence documents he declassified on the day of the speech, the intelligence community’s own August 2020 National Intelligence Council (NIC) assessment, identifies Russia as the actor whose 2020 influence campaign was aimed at helping him win, and identifies the mail-in-ballot fraud narrative to also have originated with a Russian propaganda campaign.

The Central Claims

In his speech, Trump centered on China, which he claims “acquired sensitive personal information for over 220 million U.S. voters.” (It is noteworthy that voter information is available publicly.) He also cited intelligence reporting on Venezuela, claiming it showed Venezuela had digitally rigged one of its own elections, as “evidence” that American elections could be rigged in the same way. (It is noteworthy that the declassified document finds that “large scale electronic fraud did not occur” in Venezuela’s 2012 election, and that in 2020, the Maduro regime “did not need to resort to gross fraud.” )

Trump then repeated his narrative that, due to mail-in ballots and non-citizen voting, U.S. elections have been “left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen.” He called on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act describing it as a “landmark bill” that will protect voting because it will require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and near-eliminate mail-in ballots. Trump mentioned Russia only once in the address, as one of several adversary countries with the “capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure.”

The Declassified Documents

The August 19, 2020 National Intelligence Council assessment of foreign threats to the 2020 U.S. federal elections, declassified by Trump, makes two findings relevant to this issue. Unsurprisingly, neither was mentioned by Trump.

• Russia’s 2020 operation, run through named proxies including Andriy Derkach and Konstantin Kilimnik, had a specific goal: “Their aim is to defeat the former Vice President and ensure the President’s victory.” Derkach was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury on September 10, 2020 as “an active Russian agent for over a decade.” Kilimnik was assessed by the Senate Intelligence Committee’s bipartisan Russia investigation as a Russian intelligence officer.

• “Russian actors have circulated narratives about voter fraud resulting from mail-in balloting and called some US primary voting processes ‘rigged’ by the Democratic Party.”

The SAVE Act

A key premise of the SAVE Act is that mail-in-ballot fraud is an urgent domestic threat, the narrative that Trump introduced, repeated, and has now been confirmed as Russian propaganda in documents Trump, himself, declassified. And in apparent hopes that the American people will ignore it all, Trump is now using that same Russian propaganda to lobby Congress to write the SAVE act into federal law.

Stubborn Things

Trump chose to declassify and release this intelligence to the American public that confirms evidence of a Russian influence operation intended to support his electoral campaign, something which Trump has vociferously denied over the years, and a Russian propaganda campaign about mail-in voting that Trump has continued to repeat as gospel. Facts, as John Adams wrote in 1770, “are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

Trump declassified the facts. He has signed the case against himself. Do the American public care?

Jaime Ellison is a former senior intelligence officer with two decades of service in the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, specializing in counterintelligence and security. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Applied Operations Research in Terrorism Risk Analysis. She is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.