President Donald Trump used false claims of fraud and foreign interference in the 2020 election to call for the passage of U.S. Sen. Mike Lee’s SAVE America Act, a bill Lee says is a priority over all other Senate business.

The bill would require people to provide evidence of citizenship when registering to vote. but experts say it could make it harder for people who are eligible to vote to do so and it reinforces conspiracy theories about the security of U.S. elections. The bill has been a central plank of Lee’s policy platform in recent years.

“The only reason you wouldn’t do it is you want to cheat because your policies are so bad and your candidates are so pathetic that you can’t get away or can’t get elected any other way,” Trump said Thursday night of the bill.

Trump claimed that China had tried to influence the 2020 president election, which Trump lost, and that U.S. officials worked to cover up the alleged foreign meddling. Though the White House released documents to back up the claims, The New York Times reported they did not reveal any new information about foreign influence in American elections or election system insecurities.

Lee, who is Utah’s longest-serving federal delegate, cheered the speech repeatedly on social media and pushed for the Senate to take up the bill immediately.

“Should we ask China how many noncitizens are registered to vote in America? China knows why we need the SAVE America Act,” Lee wrote on X. “For that very reason, China doesn’t want us to pass the SAVE America Act. End foreign election interference in America. Pass the SAVE America Act.”

Lee did not respond to a request for additional comment.

Though the SAVE America Act has support among Senate Republicans, it does not have enough backers to reach the necessary 60-vote threshold known as cloture, which ends debates in the chamber and allows bills to pass.

And despite the lack of evidence, the president railed against mail-in voting, electronic voting machines and claimed noncitizens were voting in droves.

Lee, whose SAVE America Act would significantly curtail mail-in voting, wrote on X, “Mail-in voting — other than for deployed military personnel and others [who] physically cannot vote in person — should not survive much longer.”

Trump has historically voted by mail, including in 2020, and Utah has a long history of secure and widespread mail-in voting.

The president’s speech Thursday night came as Utah’s Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson is locked in a battle with Trump’s Department of Justice over releasing the state’s voter rolls. Henderson, Utah’s top elections official, has thus far refused to hand over rolls, releasing only the information already publicly accessible.

Henderson said in a Friday afternoon statement: “Utah has yet to receive any information from the White House, intelligence community, or other federal agencies about specific threats to the 2026 election.”

The DOJ, meanwhile, has threatened criminal penalties, and Henderson said this week that the best way the federal government could assist with the state’s elections is to leave Utah to administer them without interference.

Utah election officials completed a comprehensive audit of the state’s voter database in May and found that 99.72% of registered voters were verifiable U.S. citizens. Of the 2,069,640 voter records it reviewed, officials found 27 alleged noncitizens and 25 “probable noncitizens.”

Widespread claims that noncitizens are voting are untrue, according to data reviewed by The Salt Lake Tribune. Three separate studies done between 2016 and 2022 estimated that, among millions of votes cast, only something like .00085% — the highest estimate of the three studies — were likely cast by noncitizens.

In her statement, Henderson called on the federal government to ensure election security resources are funded. She also asked the Trump administration to “stop threatening states and filing frivolous lawsuits that consume our precious time and taxpayer resources.”

“In the meantime,” she said, “Utah election officials will continue to deliver secure, free and fair elections for the voters of our state.”

Note to readers, 4:10 p.m. • This story has been updated to include a statement from Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson.