Pro-Trump Activists Circulate Draft Order Claiming 2020 Chinese Interference — Calls for National Emergency Over US Elections

A secret 17-page document is pushing President Donald Trump to declare an unprecedented national emergency over America's elections, grounded in a claim the intelligence community has already firmly rejected.

The Washington Post broke the story on 26 February 2026, revealing that pro-Trump activists who say they are operating in coordination with the White House are circulating a draft executive order that frames alleged Chinese interference in the 2020 presidential election as grounds for a presidential emergency declaration.

The order, if signed, would grant Trump sweeping unilateral authority over voting rules nationwide ahead of the November midterms. Its advocates expect it to form the basis of a formal executive order that Trump has himself telegraphed publicly for weeks, and sources told ABC News that the president has already reviewed versions of the document.

Who Wrote the Order — and What It Actually Contains

The primary author behind the draft is Florida attorney Peter Ticktin, a former boarding school classmate of Trump's at the New York Military Academy who previously served on a Trump legal team. He told the Washington Post he has had 'certain coordination' with White House officials during the drafting process, though he declined to name his contacts, citing personal safety concerns.

Ticktin is also the attorney of record for Tina Peters, the former Colorado county clerk convicted in 2024 for breaking into voting equipment, whom Trump issued a federal pardon for in December, though that pardon did not affect her nine-year state prison sentence, since a president holds no clemency power over state offences.

Jerome Corsi, a conspiracy theorist perhaps best known for propagating the 'birther' claims against former President Barack Obama, is also involved. He told the Post that he circulated an early version of the draft in July 2025, and that the legal theory underpinning the order has been developed jointly with Ticktin's law firm.

'[The] stage is largely being set by the revelations coming out of foreign powers being involved in influencing the 2020 election,' Corsi said. 'If there was a provable foreign intrusion, that would be a national security emergency and the order could be issued under his powers as commander in chief.' Ticktin told ABC News that during the drafting process he was also in contact with former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, all four of whom were involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election result.

The proposed order would empower Trump to ban mail-in ballots and electronic voting machines on the grounds that they constitute 'vectors of foreign interference.' It would also mandate hand-counted ballots. 'The most important provision, if you ask me, is the hand counting,' Ticktin told ABC News.

'Get rid of the machines. That's what we need to do right away.' The architects of the order acknowledge the constitutional obstacle head-on. 'Under the Constitution, it's the legislatures and states that really control how a state conducts its elections, and the president doesn't have any power to do that,' Ticktin said. Their workaround is that an emergency declaration would supersede that allocation of authority.

What the Intelligence Community Actually Found About 2020

The claim at the centre of the draft, that China interfered in the 2020 election, is directly contradicted by the Intelligence Community Assessment declassified and released by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines on 16 March 2021. Key Judgment 4 of that report, issued with high confidence, states: 'We assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US Presidential election.'

The same report found that no foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in 2020, including voter registration, ballot casting, vote tabulation, or results reporting.

The assessment did note that one member of the intelligence community, the national intelligence officer for cyber, dissented and argued China did take some online steps to damage Trump. That single dissent, however, was insufficient to alter the overall community's conclusion. The report attributed the most serious and active foreign interference effort in 2020 squarely to Russia, which mounted a sustained disinformation campaign on behalf of then-President Trump while disparaging Joe Biden.

A separate Senate Judiciary Committee investigation, published after FBI Director Kash Patel declassified relevant records, found that the FBI's Albany Field Office had developed a confidential human source alleging China produced fraudulent driver's licences for use in mail-in voting, and that the agency's headquarters shut down that investigation before it was fully pursued. The Senate report characterised that decision as 'abnormal' and politically motivated. That investigation remains unresolved, and no evidence drawn from it has been made public that would satisfy the intelligence community's formal standard.

A White House official declined to confirm or deny whether Trump intends to issue the order. 'Staff is regularly in communication with a variety of outside advocates who want to share their policy ideas with the President,' the official told the Washington Post. 'Any speculation about policies the President may or may not announce is just that — speculation.'

A Congress Stalled — and an Executive Branch Ready to Move

The emergency order's urgency for its backers is rooted in what is happening, or failing to happen, on Capitol Hill. Trump has spent weeks demanding that the Senate pass the SAVE America Act, the latest iteration of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which passed the House 220–208 earlier in February with only one Democrat in favour.

The legislation would mandate documentary proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, at the point of voter registration, and require photo identification at the ballot box. Senate Majority Leader John Thune confirmed on 25 February that the bill has 'no path' through the upper chamber in its current form, given Democratic opposition and the 60-vote threshold required to break a filibuster.

Trump's response to that impasse has been unambiguous. In a 13 February post on Truth Social, he wrote: 'There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!' He followed with a second post threatening unilateral action via executive order, writing: 'I have searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject, and will be presenting an irrefutable one in the very near future.'

Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist, told ABC News in a statement that his War Room broadcast had championed the 'investigations into the 'Big Steal' of the 2020 election' and claimed, without evidence, that 'the CCP took an active role in removing President Trump from office.' Democrats have drawn a direct line between the rhetoric and the draft order. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and House Administration Committee ranking member Joe Morelle said in a joint statement: 'We reject the legality of any executive order based on debunked claims of Chinese interference in the 2020 election.'

How courts respond if Trump signs such an order may well define the legal limits of executive power over American democracy for a generation.