Chris Krebs stood before the United States Senate and called the 2020 election "the most secure in American history."
Now a newly declassified intelligence memo shows the government knew something very different six months before a single vote was cast.
What Tulsi Gabbard just put in your hands is the document the CIA refused to let Trump show you.
China Hacked Voter Registration Databases and the Intelligence Community Buried It
The National Intelligence Council drafted its warning on January 15, 2020 – ten months before election day.
By February, the briefing had reached the Oval Office, with the heads of the CIA, FBI, and Homeland Security all in the room.
The conclusion was unambiguous: Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea all had the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure.
Trump was told his own election could be stolen.
The American people were told nothing.
A memo flagged voter registration databases as the single most vulnerable target – internet-connected, continuously updated, and wide open to foreign manipulation.
China didn't just have the capability.
They used it.
Beijing gained access to American voter registration data spanning multiple states, according to current and former officials who spoke with Just the News.
That breach made it into at least one presidential daily brief.
Americans found out in March 2026 – when Just the News pried loose the first declassified documents acknowledging Beijing's penetration.
CIA Refused Trump's Declassification Order and Deleted the Proof
Christopher Porter wrote the January 2020 memo as the top cyber intelligence officer on the National Intelligence Council.
Trump personally ordered it declassified and released to the public.
CIA leadership refused.
"The President of the United States personally ordered this information declassified and shared with the public because he thought election integrity was so important to our country," Porter told Just the News. "Despite this, CIA leaders at the time refused to release the declassified report."
When Trump won reelection in 2024, CIA officials tried to claim the report had never been declassified at all.
They didn't just bury a presidential directive – they deleted the record proving it existed.
"Years later, when he was reelected, CIA went so far as to claim that the report had never been declassified. Even the record of its declassification had been removed from the system," Porter said.
Porter raised alarms with the CIA, the ODNI, other agencies, and the Inspector General.
Every one of them retaliated against him and stripped his ability to communicate with Congress on election issues.
Last week, new Intelligence Community Inspector General Christopher Fox opened a full investigation into whether Porter's concerns were squashed and whether he was illegally targeted as a whistleblower.
FBI Suppressed China Intelligence to Protect Christopher Wray
Porter wasn't the only one who saw what was happening.
In the final days of his tenure, then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe went public with the same accusation – that CIA analysts deliberately buried China's election interference because they personally disagreed with Trump's China policies and didn't want their intelligence used to support them.
"China analysts appeared hesitant to assess Chinese actions as undue influence or interference," the IC's own internal watchdog concluded. "These analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tended to disagree with the administration's policies."
The FBI ran the same cover.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley obtained internal FBI emails showing the Bureau recalled a credible intelligence report from its Albany field office on September 25, 2020 – a report alleging China was manufacturing tens of thousands of fake driver's licenses to flood the mail-in ballot system for Joe Biden.
The FBI's own Albany analyst put it in writing: "Most concerning to me, is stating the reporting would contradict with Director Wray's testimony. I found this troubling because it implied to me that one of the reasons we aren't putting this out is for a political reason."
Wray had testified the day before that the FBI had seen no evidence of coordinated national voter fraud.
His own agents had a report saying otherwise – and headquarters buried it to protect him.
The CIA buried a presidential order. The FBI buried a credible field report. The IC's internal watchdog confirmed the political bias in writing.
For five years, the official story was the one Chris Krebs – Trump's own election security director – told the Senate.
Tulsi Gabbard just changed that.
The only question left is who gave the order to bury it – and whether anyone is going to answer for it.
Sources:
- John Solomon and Steven Richards, "US intel secretly flagged major 2020 election vulnerabilities, including voter data, memo shows," Just the News, April 20, 2026.
- Chuck Grassley, "Grassley Releases Bombshell Records Showing FBI Headquarters Interfered with Alleged Chinese Election Interference Probe," Senate Judiciary Committee, July 1, 2025.
- Guy Taylor, "John Ratcliffe: Intel on China politicized," The Washington Times, January 22, 2021.
- Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Press Release No. 06-26, April 13, 2026.