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Key events
China, Democrats decry Trump's latest unverified claims of election interference
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of US politics.
Donald Trump used a 25-minute primetime televised address on Thursday to make unverified claims about China interfering with the 2020 presidential election and cast extraordinary doubts on the integrity of the US electoral process.
However, the heavily redacted documents released by the White House, purportedly to support the president’s allegations, appeared to undercut the idea that China intended to interfere in the 2020 election – claims which had already been investigated by intelligence officials, who concluded with high confidence in 2021 that China “did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US presidential election”.
On Friday, China’s foreign ministry said the accusations were “pure fabrication” and amounted to “a malicious smear campaign”, Reuters reports.
Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told reporters at a briefing that Beijing has no interest in interfering with US elections and has never done so. “We urge the US to take a long, hard look at itself and stop making unfounded accusations against China,” the spokesperson said.
Democrats were also quick to decry Trump’s messaging, with Mark Warner, a Democratic senator from Virginia and vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee, saying that the president’s speech “was just lies and long-debunked conspiracies”.
“This is all just a prelude to interfere in our midterms — don’t fall for it,” Warner posted on X.
“If Trump wins, it’s a fair election. If he loses, there was fraud. Does he realize the election he’s talking about happened under his watch as President? The only reason Trump is bringing this up now is to distract from the fact he’s failed to make Americans’ lives better,” Mark Kelly, a Democratic senator from Arizona, posted on X.
More to come.
English (US) ·