President Donald Trump on Thursday publicly released a previously classified CIA assessment that he said proves that the Venezuelan regime conspired to manipulate election results through electronic voting technology, using the document to renew his criticism of election security both in Venezuela and the United States.
“There was a specific plot to greatly favor the corrupt regime of Venezuela,” Trump said during a prime-time address from the White House, referring to the newly declassified intelligence documents.
Trump said the newly released intelligence demonstrates that electronic election manipulation is not merely theoretical but a documented capability developed by the Venezuelan government.
“Many people have questioned whether it could actually be possible to electronically manipulate vote totals or change election results,” Trump said in a statement released by the White House. “Today, we are releasing documents that show the CIA obtained reporting of a specific plot by the Maduro regime in Venezuela to do exactly that—conspiring to digitally rig their own country’s elections in 2020.”
The president said the intelligence included “precise details” describing methods the Hugo Chavez and Maduro regimes allegedly developed “to digitally alter vote totals in ways that could not be detected even with an audit.” He argued the findings demonstrate the need to strengthen U.S. election security.
“This intelligence underscores why we must take urgent action to ensure that our own systems can never be hacked or compromised,” Trump said.
The documents, released by the White House Thursday evening, include a six-page CIA report prepared last month summarizing intelligence collected between 2004 and 2020 regarding the Venezuelan government’s alleged interest in manipulating electronic voting systems and its relationship with voting technology company Smartmatic.
The assessment broadly supports Trump’s assertion that Venezuelan officials explored ways to manipulate electronic voting systems, but it also includes significant caveats. It summarizes intelligence alleging that officials developed technical plans before the 2020 National Assembly elections to create virtual voting machines capable of substituting manipulated vote totals while making them appear to originate from legitimate machines. CIA analysts concluded that several of the alleged techniques were technically feasible.
However, the report emphasizes that its findings are based on intelligence reporting about Venezuela’s capabilities and intent rather than confirmed operational use. It states that the intelligence community did not definitively establish that large-scale electronic fraud altered the outcome of specific Venezuelan elections, including the 2012 presidential contest.
According to the CIA memo, U.S. intelligence documented “persistent concerns” that the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro developed a sustained interest in manipulating electronic voting systems. The report also concludes, however, that neither the Venezuelan government nor Smartmatic possessed the level of control necessary to manipulate elections outside Venezuela in a predictable manner because the alleged capabilities depended on controlling every stage of Venezuela’s own electoral process—from programming voting machines to auditing paper receipts.
Although heavily redacted, the released CIA memorandum describes intelligence suggesting Chávez and later Maduro pursued election manipulation over many years. It says intelligence from April 2004 indicated Chávez expressed a desire to prevent the reelection of a sitting U.S. president, a finding incorporated into the intelligence community’s 2006 National Security Threat Assessment.
The assessment also says intelligence indicated Chávez’s intelligence services—including military counterintelligence and the Bolivarian Intelligence Service —worked with Venezuela’s National Electoral Council and Smartmatic before the 2012 presidential election to develop plans involving preprogrammed voting machines capable of adding approximately 1.5 million votes in traditionally pro-government voting centers.
Separate intelligence collected in September 2020 alleged Venezuelan officials developed plans to manipulate the December 2020 National Assembly elections using virtual voting machines capable of replacing legitimate vote totals while making altered results appear authentic. According to the memo, analysts concluded that several of the alleged techniques—including artificial intelligence components, virtual voting machines and altered digital hash files—were technically feasible, although they stressed they were evaluating technical capability rather than confirming such methods had actually been used.
The assessment also revisits the U.S. government’s long-standing concerns about Smartmatic. It notes that a 2006 intelligence assessment concluded the company’s acquisition of U.S.-based Sequoia Voting Systems posed a “moderate threat” to U.S. national security because of concerns about potential Venezuelan government influence over election technology. Those concerns contributed to a federal review that ultimately led Smartmatic to divest Sequoia in 2007.
The CIA memo also recounts Smartmatic’s public break with the Venezuelan government. According to the report, the company ceased operations in Venezuela in 2018 after accusing the Maduro administration of inflating turnout by more than one million votes in the 2017 National Constituent Assembly election, ending years as the country’s principal election technology provider. Election experts have cited that episode as evidence that Smartmatic challenged, rather than facilitated, alleged electoral fraud. The company has repeatedly denied manipulating election results and says its technology contains safeguards designed to detect irregularities.
The report includes additional analytical caveats. It says a separate 2013 CIA “Devil’s Advocate” analysis describing how electronic manipulation could theoretically have occurred was an alternative analytical exercise—not a definitive intelligence judgment—and acknowledged “conflicting reporting” and limited visibility into key elements of Venezuela’s voting system.
Trump used the report as part of a broader argument questioning election integrity in the United States ahead of this year’s midterm elections.
During the White House address, he again alleged that China interfered in the 2020 U.S. presidential election by stealing voter data and repeated his longstanding claim that the U.S. electoral system is deeply flawed.
“There is no Third World country that has elections like the ones we have,” Trump said, continuing to dispute the legitimacy of the 2020 election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
The president also urged Congress to pass election legislation requiring voter identification and significantly restricting voting by mail. The measure remains stalled in the Senate, where supporters lack sufficient votes to overcome Democratic opposition.
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