President Donald Trump is to deliver a primetime address to the nation on Thursday evening in which he is expected to present newly declassified intelligence material and reassert his long-contested claim that the 2020 presidential election was compromised by fraud. Two senior administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told US media that the speech will focus on alleged vulnerabilities in electronic voting machines and foreign efforts to influence the vote. Trump will be joined by CIA Director John Ratcliffe and the acting Director of National Intelligence, Bill Pulte, who has overseen a review of classified documents with the stated aim of providing evidence for the president’s assertions. The address, scheduled for 9 p.m. Eastern Time, comes just over 110 days before midterm elections in which the Republican Party is widely expected to lose control of one or both chambers of Congress.

Viewed from Washington, the speech represents an escalation of the administration’s year-long effort to use federal resources to revisit the 2020 result. The White House has established a task force that includes Pulte and John Solomon, a former journalist appointed as a special government employee, to sift through intelligence and law enforcement files for material that could be declassified. In parallel, the administration has removed the last three members of the federal Election Assistance Commission, leaving the agency without any commissioners, and has pushed legislation known as the Save America Act that would require proof of citizenship for voter registration and create a national voter database. Democratic lawmakers and election security analysts in the United States have warned that these moves, combined with the president’s rhetoric, could lay the groundwork for challenging unfavourable midterm results. Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, whose 2020 runoff victory has been singled out by some Trump supporters as potentially illegitimate, said the president was “afraid to lose the midterms” and would “reheat debunked election conspiracy theories.”

The intelligence community’s own assessments, however, have consistently undercut the central claim of a stolen election. A report issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in March 2021, during the final months of Trump’s first term, concluded that no foreign adversary had attempted to alter or hack any technical aspect of the voting and reporting process. While the same report documented influence operations by Russia, Iran and China — including Russian disinformation aimed at denigrating Joe Biden and an Iranian campaign intended to undermine Trump — it found no evidence that any of these activities changed vote tallies. Subsequent audits, court rulings and reviews by the Department of Justice and the federal cybersecurity agency all affirmed the integrity of the 2020 election. Administration officials cited by US media acknowledge that they have not seen intelligence indicating that votes were hacked or flipped, yet the declassification push continues.

The speech is expected to be delivered against a backdrop of renewed military confrontation with Iran, and some advisers have indicated that Trump will also address that conflict. But the domestic political calendar gives the election-related content its immediate significance. With the midterms approaching and the president’s approval ratings near record lows, analysts in London and Washington note that the address may serve to mobilise his core supporters and to frame any Democratic gains as illegitimate. The White House task force is expected to begin releasing documents in the coming weeks, and the president has said he will discuss “really, really big news” that the country “has to shape up.” The speech is scheduled for Thursday night; officials caution that its contents could still be revised.