A Trump official who is in Romania to monitor its redo of presidential elections, praised Bucharest for annulling the original ballot and confirmed foreign interference in the procedure, naming Russia but noting there were other malign foreign actors.
Vice chairman of the Federal Electoral Commission, Republican James E. Trainor said that defense and security documents “show very clearly that there were “external interference in the electoral process”.
“The bad actor in the world is TikTok,” he said. “Foreign influence would like to disrupt the (Romanian) Government’s work.”
“I don’t think there is any doubt that there was foreign interference in the election,” he said on Antena 3. “ The main focus was on Russia’s interference in the elections. But don’t forget that TikTok is owned by Chinese people and there are a lot of foreign influences that enter this platform, there are governments that use this platform. So I think it’s problematic to focus only on Russian influence.”
The statement goes against opinions voiced by members of the Trump Administration. Vice President J.D. Vance and billionaire and DOGE chief Elon Musk have been highly critical of Romania’s decision to cancel elections.
Romanian analysts said it showed a shift in Washington’s understanding why the Constitutional Court voided the elections in December.
His comments come after a bipartisan delegation of eight U.S. members of Congress visited Bucharest last month on a fact-finding and clarification mission over the cancelled ballot. It was the first visit by U.S. officials since the election was voided.
“We are here primarily to monitor the elections that will take place on Sunday. It’s a great opportunity for Romania. It fought to organize these elections. So here we will hopefully see the free and fair functioning of democracies and how these things should work.
“Romania is a fortified fortress, important for the EU and NATO” Trainor said. “I applaud Romania’s decision to take a drastic step and hold new elections”, he added.
“This shows the robustness of the election administrators in Romania, who detected this and were able to analyze what was happening. I know there are people who think it’s very bad and unfair, but I think the bad actor right now is social media, like TikTok,” the US official said.
Romania tells US Congress group presidential election will be fair, transparent
