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President Trump used a Thursday primetime address to revive 2020 election-fraud claims, alleging a “deep state” cover-up and Chinese meddling dating to 2018.

Getting into it: During his speech last night, Trump laid out his central claim that China pulled off “the largest compromise of election data in history,” illicitly acquiring 220 million US voter files, and that “deep state” officials in his own intelligence agencies hid the information from him while he was president. He also alleged Venezuela had the capability to rig voting machines, claimed DHS identified roughly 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote, and pointed to a Michigan voter registration case he said was covered up.

Trump ordered the DOJ, FBI, and CIA to investigate and, if warranted, fire and prosecute those involved. To back it all up, the White House released a batch of declassified documents on its website as he spoke.

Critics have pushed back hard, noting that almost none of it holds up. A declassified March 2021 intelligence assessment found China considered but ultimately decided against trying to influence the 2020 outcome, and concluded there were “no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process.” The noncitizen figure appears to have lumped in large numbers of deceased voters and came from a review DHS won’t fully explain. Even conservative journalist John Solomon, who helped the White House release the documents, admitted the intelligence community has “zero evidence that a foreign power flipped a vote in 2020, 2022 or 2024.”

Supporters, though, argue Trump did the right thing by putting the intelligence out in the open. Hans von Spakovsky, an election law expert and senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, called the allegations shocking given that they came from the CIA, FBI, and other intelligence agency reports, and said Trump “should be commended for declassifying and releasing the reports that support his claims so they can be reviewed in depth.”

This comes as Trump has spent years claiming his 2020 loss to Joe Biden was “rigged” and “stolen,” despite more than 60 failed lawsuits, repeated audits, and even his own first-term officials, including former Attorney General William Barr, who rejected those claims. Thursday’s speech was billed as major news, with his press secretary warning it would “shock,” but multiple networks including ABC, NBC, and CNN declined to air it live.

The timing was notable, as it’s less than four months before the November midterms that will decide control of Congress, and the whole speech built toward Trump’s push to pass the SAVE America Act, a stalled bill requiring proof of citizenship and photo ID to register and vote that critics say could disenfranchise millions of Americans.