CIA Documents Contradict Trump on Venezuela’s Elections

In his State of the Union address on Thursday, July 16, US President Donald Trump claimed that declassified documents from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) showed evidence of alleged electronic voting fraud in Venezuela during Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro’s governments. However, the documents, declassified by the White House, contradict the accusation.

Trump said his speech aimed to reinforce the US citizens’ confidence in the country’s voting system. However, several US media outlets opined that he dedicated a good part of his speech to undermining the US elections. Similarly, Trump’s claims about the Venezuelan electoral system were at odds with the contents of the files that he referenced.

The centerpiece of the package of declassified documents is a CIA memo dated June 29, 2026, which assesses the information gathered over nearly two decades about the Venezuelan government’s potential to interfere in elections through voting machine technology. Between 2004 and 2020, those reports claimed “persistent concerns” regarding the manipulation of electronic voting systems, without verification, notes The Washington Post.

What the report admits
Regarding these suspicions, the CIA “did not definitively confirm that large-scale electronic fraud was successfully executed in specific Venezuelan elections,” and its baseline assessment stated that “other factors better explained electoral outcomes.” The document, however, attributed to Venezuelan officials “some capability in manipulating electronic voting systems,” without proof that this technology—primarily the work of the firm Smartmatic—had been used to skew any election.

The report added that claims about advanced techniques came from “limited sources,” and the detected vulnerabilities remained theoretical.

The CIA also looked at elections outside Venezuela and ruled out that Caracas could interfere in elections abroad. “Neither Smartmatic nor the Venezuelan government had the capability—that is, the level of control or access required—to manipulate the outcome of an election outside of Venezuela,” states the document. This addresses a theory about Venezuela rigging US elections that Trump’s circle has been spreading since he lost his re-election bid to Joe Biden in 2020.

This theory emerged in the days following the 2020 US elections, when lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell accused the machine manufacturers Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic of secretly being Venezuelan companies dedicated to altering votes to favor Commander Chávez, claiming the companies had facilitated Joe Biden’s victory through hidden programming. The Washington Post pointed out that neither Trump nor his allies have provided evidence that Venezuela interfered in a US election to date.

This lack of evidence was documented within the US intelligence apparatus. A 2021 report concluded that “there is no information suggesting that current or previous Venezuelan regimes were involved in attempts to compromise US electoral infrastructure.” The report was prepared by John Ratcliffe, the national intelligence director appointed by Trump himself.

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Trump contradicts the CIA
On Thursday, Trump repeated his debunked theory. He claimed to have published “documents that show the CIA obtained information about a specific plot to manipulate the results” in favor of President Nicolás Maduro’s government. He concluded that “that is exactly what happened” in the 2020 Venezuelan elections, claiming methods were designed to alter the vote counts without leaving a trace. The New York Times called these claims a distortion of the conclusions of his own intelligence agency.

While the document speaks of unconfirmed suspicions, Trump’s speech proclaims certainties. Where the CIA dismisses evidence, Trump claims to have evidence. An accusation sustained for six years, denied by the documents that were supposed to prove it, is revealed to be propaganda.

Trump applied the same theory to other governments. In the same speech, Trump referred to Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea as “adversaries” and attributed to them the capability to compromise the “electoral infrastructure” of the United States.

Russia’s response echoes the core of the Venezuelan case. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declared that Trump is relying on “anonymous and unfounded information” from intelligence agencies and that several investigations by the US intelligence apparatus concluded that Russia “had no influence” in US elections. He emphasized that Moscow never interferes in the internal affairs of other countries, a treatment it expects from other nations.

 

(Telesur)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/SC/SF