China allegedly obtained what the Justice Department has struggled to get from Democratic-led states: sensitive American voter data.
That is the central irony election-integrity expert and GAI Vice President Eric Eggers says the media missed after President Trump released newly declassified intelligence on foreign threats to the 2020 election.
Eggers, co-host of “The Drill Down” with Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer, told Greg Kelly that the most explosive part of the disclosure was not Trump’s primetime presentation. It was the supporting material unveiled by Homeland Security officials.
“As interesting and as newsworthy as Donald Trump’s presentation was on Thursday night, I think the presentation by the DHS, in terms of the statistics, the number of illegal immigrants they found registered to vote in only four different states, and more importantly, the juxtaposition of how the intelligence community responded to Chinese hacking in our country in 2020 versus what the Biden administration did specifically about the Chinese hacking of another country in 2024, is a massively unreported story,” Eggers said.
The White House says the declassified intelligence shows China obtained personal information connected to 220 million American voters during the 2020 election cycle, including names, addresses, phone numbers and party affiliations.
The publicly released allegations do not establish that China changed votes or altered the election’s outcome. Beijing has denied Trump’s broader election-interference accusations.
For Eggers, the acquisition of voter information is still a major national-security failure, especially as states fight federal demands for access to their registration databases.
“Ironically, China was able to acquire data that leftist-run blue states refused to give to the Department of Justice,” Eggers said. “That’s the headline. Everyone should be talking about it.”
Eggers said voter-file rules differ widely across the country. Some basic information can be purchased or obtained publicly in certain states, while more sensitive fields remain restricted.
“So first off, each state is different,” he said. “I don’t believe it’s true universally. Some states you could purchase the information commercially, but some states you absolutely cannot.”
He pointed to Justice Department litigation seeking voter-registration information from state officials. The department has, in fact, sued states including Oregon and Maine for refusing to produce unredacted voter rolls and information about list maintenance. DOJ noted that both states had provided comparable information to a private organization. The department says those lawsuits seek compliance with federal election laws.
Eggers said officials in Minnesota, Oregon, Washington and California have resisted federal requests for information. He also noted that several states share voter data with the Electronic Registration Information Center, better known as ERIC, while fighting federal demands.
“One of the cruel ironies about this is that these blue states will turn over to a database known as ERIC, ironically, their information, but they won’t give it to the federal government who just wants to do this audit,” Eggers said.
California is not an ERIC member, but Minnesota, Oregon and Washington have participated in the interstate data-sharing organization.
Eggers cited New Jersey as a concrete example of why he believes audits are needed. He said he reviewed a DHS letter identifying approximately 19,000 voter records whose names, birth dates and addresses matched people listed as noncitizens in federal databases.
Those matches are not proof that all the individuals are ineligible, and they do not show that any of them cast a ballot. Naturalized citizens, outdated records and matching errors can complicate such reviews.
Eggers acknowledged the distinction.
“People are going to criticize, well, you haven’t proven they’ve actually voted yet,” he said.
His answer is that states should run the records through federal verification systems and determine what the matches mean rather than refusing the review.
Eggers also offered a theory for why conservative media outlets have devoted relatively little attention to the disclosures.
“If I had to guess, I think it’s because of the lawyers,” he said, arguing that costly defamation litigation following the 2020 election has left news organizations “a little gun-shy.”
He contrasted that caution with the climate before the 2020 vote, when media outlets treated election-system vulnerabilities as a serious national story.
Known vulnerabilities do not prove that ballots were manipulated. Eggers argues they do prove that serious questions about data security should not be dismissed simply because they concern the 2020 election.
China allegedly got its hands on voter information covering most of the American electorate. The Justice Department is still going to court for records from US states.
That is not proof of a stolen election. For Eggers, it is proof that the audit cannot end with “trust us.”
Listen to the clip above.
