On Thursday night, after days of buildup, Donald Trump delivered a speech on election security in which he suggested US elections were threatened by China. He repeatedly pointed to China and its purported efforts to hack voter and election data and to mount influence operations to foment anti-Trump sentiment. But he provided no proof of Chinese interference with US elections or of any voter fraud. And, perhaps more significantly, he left out a big piece of the picture: Russia.

As Trump assailed US elections as totally rigged and lacking credibility—again, without offering any evidence of this—he fixated on Beijing. The connection was not clear. He seemed to be saying that China has been involved in subverting US elections, including the 2020 contest that he lost and that he has falsely insisted (ad naseum) was stolen from him. He denounced the supposed Deep State for having “worked to actively suppress and downplay information about the extent of China’s sinister election meddling, covering it up from both the president and the American people.” In 2020, though, the major culprit in terms of election meddling was not China, but Moscow.

Who says so? Trump’s own intelligence community.

In August 2020, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a brief statement assessing foreign efforts to influence the ongoing presidential election. It noted that the intelligence agencies had concluded that China and Iran favored Trump’s defeat. But the statement provided no details on what, if anything, China and Iran were doing to thwart Trump’s reelection.

As for Russia, the statement was more direct. It said Moscow was “using a range of measures to primarily denigrate” Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrats’ presidential candidate. It noted that a “pro-­Russia” Ukrainian parliamentarian named Andriy Derkach “was spreading” false claims—alleging that Biden had engaged in corruption in Ukraine—to “undermine” his candidacy. It added, “Some Kremlin-­linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television.”