China’s alleged election interference operation makes Russia’s 2016 Facebook campaign look like chump change, according to investigative author Peter Schweizer.
Schweizer, President of the Government Accountability Institute and author of The Invisible Coup, told Glenn Beck that recently declassified records point to a far more aggressive Chinese effort to penetrate American elections than the public was told after the 2020 campaign.
He expects President Trump to put that evidence front and center in his upcoming address.
“I think he’s going to focus on several aspects of foreign interference,” Schweizer said. “I think China is going to be a central player in that.”
Schweizer based that prediction on documents obtained through investigative journalist John Solomon, who is temporarily serving in the White House as a special government employee assisting with declassification.
According to Schweizer’s description of Solomon’s reporting, the records indicate that China hacked voter databases in multiple states during the 2020 election and that the CIA knew about the activity.
Schweizer said Solomon’s reporting further indicates the intelligence agency avoided emphasizing or publicizing the finding because officials believed it could politically benefit Trump.
“The fact that we know that now in the 2020 election, China was hacking voter databases in multiple states and that the CIA knew about this,” Schweizer said, describing the first major finding.
“And according to John’s reporting, which is again based on documents, the CIA did not want to emphasize it or publicize it because they thought it would help Trump in that 2020 election.”
That allegation does not, by itself, establish that China changed vote totals or determined the election’s outcome. Schweizer’s warning centers on Beijing’s reported capabilities, the potential vulnerability of election systems and the intelligence community’s alleged handling of the information.
The second piece of the puzzle, he argued, involves counterfeit identification and mail-in voting.
Schweizer pointed to a 2020 FBI tip alleging that China was exploring ways to exploit mail-in balloting through fake IDs. He also cited government reports showing that authorities at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport intercepted 1,500 shipments containing more than 20,000 counterfeit driver’s licenses.
“So, Glenn, if you look at their ability to hack into voter databases and you look at what appears to be a systematic effort to generate large volumes of fake IDs, you merge those capabilities together, you have the potential for really affecting elections,” Schweizer said.
Potential is the critical word. Schweizer did not claim the O’Hare licenses were proven to have been used to cast fraudulent ballots. He argued that the reported database intrusions and mass production of fake identification reveal capabilities that demand investigation.
Schweizer said China’s failure to prosecute forgery operations after they are exposed raises another red flag.
“China does not go after and prosecute these people,” he said. “They allow them to continue to operate, which indicates that this is effectively, I would argue, state supported by the CCP.”
Schweizer connected that alleged strategy to what he considers another weak point in the American political system: the EB-5 investor visa program.
The program allows eligible foreign investors to obtain permanent residency by investing in qualifying American ventures. Permanent residents can legally make political contributions, unlike foreign nationals without that status.
Schweizer claimed Chinese nationals have heavily exploited the program, sometimes securing residency without meaningfully living in the United States.
“There’s tens of millions of dollars that we’ve been able to calculate,” he said, describing political donations tied to Chinese nationals who obtained permanent residency.
“There’s probably much higher of money that’s literally flowing legally from Chinese nationals living in China to our political elections.”
Schweizer said election legislation such as the SAVE Act is necessary, but warned that no single bill can close every avenue an adversary might exploit.
“Our adversaries are very smart,” he said. “They shift around, they shift the terrain and they exploit things that are, you know, even ostensibly legal.”
“It’s like water going downhill. It’s going to figure out a way around the barriers.”
Schweizer predicted that much of the national press would dismiss the China evidence as speculative, exaggerated or motivated by Trump’s continued anger over the 2020 election.
He accused major news organizations of spending years amplifying the Russia narrative while downplaying reports of Chinese election interference.
“Russia spent $180,000 on Facebook ads in 2016,” Schweizer said. “And you had all these exposés. And yes, that should be exposed, all these exposés.”
“What China is doing is on a much larger and much more industrial scale, the capacity with which they can do it, the resources they have, the United Front groups that you’ve talked about that are out there getting involved in elections.”
Even while delivering that broad warning, Schweizer drew a careful line between suspicious activity and proof that a particular election result was illegitimate.
Asked about speculation involving Georgia’s Senate races, he said he had not investigated the matter and had not seen evidence showing enough votes were manipulated to change the winners.
“I have not seen concrete evidence of the actual manipulation of the number of votes that were necessary to win those seats,” Schweizer said.
That distinction may prove central to the coming fight. Schweizer’s case is not that every disputed election result should be thrown out. It is that documentary evidence of attempted foreign interference must be examined, regardless of which political party benefits from its release.
“The key thing is, you and I, we need to continue to say follow the facts, follow the evidence,” he said.
Washington spent years hunting Russian memes. Schweizer says the real machinery of foreign influence was humming much farther east.
Listen to the clip above.
