Do declassified files support Trump's election security claims?

Protecting America's "election infrastructure" has been a bipartisan goal for years. The US made efforts to establish standards to strengthen and streamline the mechanics of voting after the contested 2000 presidential election and again following evidence of Russian election interference in the 2016 election.While election procedures are managed by state governments, most votes are now recorded on some form of paper ballot.Trump may have a more partisan purpose behind his re-airing of these claims. He appears to be using these concerns to cast doubt on the 2020 election presidential election he lost and to potentially question the validity of future elections.In his speech Trump said previously classified US intelligence assessments proved that the US government had known voting machines "are extremely exposed to attack"."As one assessment states, we judged that the United States' adversaries, including, at a minimum, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, as well as non-state groups have the capability to compromise US election infrastructure," he said.The documents released by the Trump administration include a January 2020 declassified NIC assessment, external of vulnerabilities in the election of that year, which acknowledged that "ballot and voting machine preparation is vulnerable to cyber, supply chain, or insider threats".It said that machines with no paper backup were "particularly vulnerable to cyber operations".However, the NIC assessment also stated that "security and mitigation measures used in these processes, and the distribution of voting machine storage facilities countrywide, would make it difficult for an adversary to coordinate a campaign to manipulate voting results across an entire state or multiple states".The specific assessment Trump may have been referring to is another declassified NIC report from August 2020, external, which said "foreign states or other actors may seek to compromise our election infrastructure".It is also important to note that Trump has taken steps to cut funding and undermine the independence of some of the government programmes and agencies that have been tasked in recent years with monitoring election security.Michigan, a battleground state Trump won in 2016 and 2024 but lost in 2020, has long been central to the president's allegations of voting fraud.It was one of the few states he specifically mentioned on Thursday night. In this instance, however, the concerns appear to centre on voter registration drives, not actual balloting.Political parties often rely on paid efforts to gather signatures for ballot drives and to register new voters when volunteers are in short supply. That can create negative incentives when people are paid by the signature.Trump claims there was significant evidence of fraud in Michigan before the 2020 election that had "been buried and covered up".The files released by the White House show election officials in the city of Muskegon were investigating allegations of fraudulent voter registration applications in October 2020 and one document mentions "8,000 to 10,000 registrations".The case was referred to police and the FBI tested a sample of applications and found that 91 out of 107 applications "returned no results in database checks".The case was active for almost five years until the FBI closed it on 25 September 2025, stating the "investigation to date did not identify a criminal violation".Trump says he has now asked FBI director Kash Patel to fully investigate the matter.However, local news reported, external at the time that police were looking into the matter after Muskegon election officials identified "irregularities" with some voter register applications.