The Daily Journal. — U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday night that Nicolás Maduro’s administration conspired “to manipulate” Venezuela’s 2020 parliamentary elections digitally.
In a televised address to the nation from the White House, Trump presented a series of declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents focused on electronic interference capabilities in Venezuela’s electoral processes.
During his remarks, the U.S. president said intelligence reports reveal a coordinated strategy by authorities in Caracas to interfere with computerized voting systems.
“Today we are releasing documents showing that the CIA obtained reports about a specific plot to carry out a major operation in favor of the corrupt Maduro regime in Venezuela,” Trump said.
The U.S. administration directly linked the contents of the classified files to Venezuela’s recent political developments.
“That is exactly what happened: they conspired to manipulate their own country’s elections in 2020 digitally. And that is exactly what they did,” he asserted.
Methods designed to evade audits in Venezuela’s electoral system
The president’s statement focused on the technical findings described in U.S. intelligence reports regarding the control mechanisms allegedly implemented in Venezuela’s voting system. According to the information presented, those methods were highly sophisticated and enabled operators to bypass post-election verification procedures.
Describing the scope of the technological tools attributed to Caracas, Trump stated:
“These reports included precise details about the methods the regime developed to digitally alter vote totals in a way that could not be detected, even through an audit, no matter how thorough.”
The president stressed that the technical knowledge gathered from the Venezuelan case should serve as a geopolitical warning about the risks associated with election digitalization.
“This intelligence underscores why we must take urgent action to ensure that our own system can never, ever be hacked or compromised as it was in the past,” he concluded.
