Biden claims 'there is evidence' that China is 'meddling' in 2024 election

In an interview with Time Magazine, incumbent President Joe Biden said that "There, there, there, there is evidence that meddling is going on" when asked about China's interest in US elections. Trump, then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and AG Bill Barr said that China had worked to further Biden's chances in 2020, though the intelligence community later said they were not, claiming that China had no interest in who won in 2020. The 2024 election is a repeat, a rematch of the 2020 election.

"I do have one last on China," the Time interviewer asked at the end of the wide-ranging interview, "which is are they meddling in the election? Have you seen evidence that they're meddling with AI or in other ways in the US election?"

"There, there, there, there is evidence that meddling is going on," the transcript reads, "I'm not going to get into, I don't think I should from an intelligence standpoint, there..."

"It sounds as if they are," the interviewer presses.

"I think China would have an interest—let me put it like this— would have an interest in meddling," Biden said. "Everybody, all the bad guys are rooting for Trump, man. Not a joke. Think about it. Think about it. I mean, that line that Macron used, and it says that... I was making notes for this. It said, Macron, they know the experience of brain death unlike any time. Because lack of US leadership, we should reassess the reality of NATO in light of the lack of US leadership." 

In 2019, French President Emanuel Macron said "What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO," going on to say that under Trump, the US seemed to be "turning its back on us." Trump famously demanded that NATO nations in Europe chip in their fair share for their own defense. European leaders didn't like it, but many complied.

In the lead-up to the 2016 election, then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton claimed that Trump had colluded with Russia to interfere in the US presidential election. The campaign leaked their suspicions to the press which were then reported as fact by Slate and other publications. Clinton's campaign dug into their allegations with the help of an opposition research firm and used that research to make false claims against Trump. The campaign recorded their payment for the opposition research firm as legal fees and was later fined $8,000 for the falsification of business records. The payments were in violation of campaign finance regulations. Clinton personally approved of leaking the information about the fake allegations to the press.

In April, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a threat warning, saying that "Beijing is expanding its global covert influence posture to better support the CCP’s goals. The PRC aims to sow doubts about US leadership, undermine democracy, and extend Beijing’s influence."

Trump had said that China helped Biden win the election in 2020. In August 2021, DNI John Ratcliffe said "China is using a massive and sophisticated influence campaign that dwarfs anything that any other country is doing." Attorney General Bill Barr said at the time that he'd "seen the intelligence." Later, a report from the National Intelligence Council read, "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. We have high confidence in this judgment." 

The report read: "China … did not view either election outcome as being advantageous enough for China to risk getting caught meddling." Others claim that China has been sowing distrust in American institutions, though these same institutions, led by Democrats, have seen the political persecution and imprisonment of opponents to Democrat rule.

The concerns over "meddling" this year have led Facebook to remove many accounts they say are "spamoflage" operating from China and taking on the characteristics of accounts that support President Donald Trump's efforts to earn a second term. The Council on Foreign Relations posits that "Beijing’s goal may simply be to weaken American democracy, and hence its ability to act coherently abroad, by inflaming political divisions," noting that it's possible they prefer one candidate over the other.

Biden spoke to Xi Jinping via phone in April, saying that the communist nation should stay out of the American election. Xi had previously promised, during a trip to San Francisco, that the country would stay out of it.