Friday, July 17, 2026
Vol. VIII
Est. 2019

The Mind Shield

News · Opinion · Politics · Analysis

Trump declassified documents showing Russia tried to help him in 2020.

Trump declassified documents showing Russia tried to help him in 2020.
President Donald Trump speaks in the East Room of the White House, Thursday, July 16, 2026, in Washington. Photo: Saul Loeb / AP

Donald Trump delivered a speech on Thursday alleging that there are vulnerabilities in America’s election system that foreign countries had exploited in the 2020 presidential election.

Trump declassified several documents to support his claim. Among the documents the administration declassified was one showing that Russia tried to help get Trump elected in his re-election against Joe Biden—a claim Trump has repeatedly denied.

The document dated August 19, 2020, from the National Intelligence Council, detailed how Russian proxies spread false claims that Biden was involved in criminal activity in his dealings with Ukraine to implicate him in a corruption scandal to help Trump win re-election.

“[REDACTED] President Putin and senior Russian officials are overseeing efforts by proxies– [REDACTED] –to spread claims about fomer Vice President Biden as well as Ukrainian politicians and alleged Ukrainian influence in the 2016 US election. These claims include that when the former Vice President was in office, he engaged in criminal activity in his dealings with Ukraine and individuals tied to Ukrainian energy firm Burisma,” the document reads.

“These figures are conspiring to intensify their efforts as the election approaches to orchestrate a high-profile corruption scandal implicating former Vice President Biden and the Democratic Party at the peak of the 2020 US presidential campaign,” it continued. “Their aim is to defeat the former Vice President and ensure the President’s victory. Some of these proxy actors anticipate that Ukraine­ themed narratives about Democratic corruption will play a decisive role in the election and that US persons are key to propagating these narratives.”

Trump withheld aid from Ukraine in exchange for dirt on Biden after he announced his bid for the presidency. Trump was impeached for the first time on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress over the call to Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which he pressured the Ukrainian leader to investigate Biden and a debunked conspiracy theory regarding the 2016 U.S. election. Trump was acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate.

On Thursday, CIA Director John Ratcliffe praised his department for their role in the Trump administration’s declassification of election-related documents, saying the effort was meant to uphold “public confidence in elections.”

“Protecting our democracy and the integrity of our elections from foreign influence and interference remains paramount,” Ratcliffe said in a post on Twitter, adding, “These matters deserve public scrutiny to ensure our democracy’s foundation – the security and public confidence in our elections – is unassailable.”