Not even a seasoned Republican lawyer who handles election matters was convinced by President Donald Trump’s wild speech where he claimed there were “shocking vulnerabilities” in the security of U.S.polling places.
Ben Ginsberg, who once worked for George W.
Bush’s campaigns, including the 2000 Florida recount, dismissed Trump’s claims during a 25-minute talk about supposed fraud and foreign meddling in the 2020 elections.
He told CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins that there’s still no proof that any election results were wrong.
“There still weren’t the documents.There still wasn’t the evidence,” he said, adding that they’ll have to see what gets released.
Ginsberg, who helped lead a bipartisan group that looked into election processes, has been arguing against Trump’s focus on voter fraud since 2020.
In 2022, he told the House committee looking into the January 6 attack that there was no sign of fraud in the 2020 election that Biden won.
In his speech, Trump said foreign actors had done “great damage” to the country and that U.S.
elections were “left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen.”
The White House later released a bunch of intelligence documents it said supported his claims, but most of the info seems old and has not supported many of Trump’s more serious claims.
Ginsberg admitted the U.S.
election system isn’t perfect and includes more than 8,000 different areas.“There are differences between them.Elections are underfunded.To fix the problems, there should be a lot of federal money going to states and local areas,” he said.
He also pointed out that Trump’s worries about China targeting U.S.
elections might be partly his own fault.
“After all—and this feels a little like an own goal—the administration has cut back on cybersecurity agencies like CISA and the Department of Justice team that helps states,” he said.
“If there’s a problem with the 2026 election, it will be because the defenses the federal government gives to the states to stop such attacks have been greatly reduced.
So, some leadership could help on that,” he added.
Ginsberg joined CNN along with other experts to check Trump’s claims right after his speech.
CNN’s Zachary Cohen also noted that the documents the White House released didn’t show anything new.
“None of the declassified information supports the idea that any previous election results—including the 2020 presidential contest that Trump lost—were changed by foreign interference or fraud in a way that would have made a difference,” Cohen wrote on X.
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