By Newly declassified documents reveal that the FBI operated a secret program that classified prominent Trump administration officials, Republican lawmakers and journalists investigating the Biden family as potential conduits for Russian disinformation.
The operation, known as “Round River,” examined information involving former President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Ukrainian energy company Burisma and allegations of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.
OPERATION ROUND RIVER EXPOSED: Today the White House Government Transparency Task Force released documents newly declassified by President Trump that reveal a secret operation by the FBI and spy agencies to neutralize the Biden family corruption scandal during the 2020 election.
— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) August 12, 2026
But the newly released files show a striking divide in how the FBI categorized the Americans caught up in the alleged Russian influence operation, writes The Daily Caller.
Republicans and journalists investigating the Bidens were labeled “conduits.” Prominent Democrats were labeled “targets.”
Among those identified as conduits 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.
Those identified as targets included Democratic megadonor George Soros, former Secretary of State John Kerry, former State Department official Victoria Nuland, former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
A White House Transparency Task Force led by Solomon released the documents Wednesday night. The records include an Office of the Director of National Intelligence slide deck describing Round River and a spreadsheet identifying people connected to the operation.
The documents were obtained from the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, which handled the Round River operation.
FBI Director Kash Patel has since shut down the task force and ordered a broader review of its activities involving tens of thousands of pages of documents.
“While our internal review of the FITF is not yet complete, we are investigating whether the FITF used information learned from the Round River assessment to undermine or influence ongoing investigations by only focusing on the subset of CHS’s (Confidential Human Sources) involving the Bidens,” Patel wrote in a letter to the White House.
The newly disclosed records raise questions about whether the FBI’s concerns about Russian disinformation were used to discredit legitimate scrutiny of the Biden family during the 2020 presidential campaign.
Nikki Floris, then a deputy assistant director in the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division and one of the officials overseeing the task force, previously described herself in September 2020 as “basically running a shadow government inside the FBI right now.”
Other recently released documents show Floris moving to withdraw a tip involving possible Chinese election interference before it could move further through the intelligence community.
“AAAAAAAH SNAPS!!!! Well done [REDACTED] THANK YOU for handling!!!” she wrote after the FBI’s Albany field office retracted the tip without investigating it.
Round River also intersected directly with congressional investigations into Hunter Biden.
In August 2020, while Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson were preparing a report examining Hunter Biden’s foreign financial dealings, FBI officials gave senators a defensive briefing warning that their investigation was “a target of Russian disinformation.”
Grassley and Johnson later said the FBI provided no evidence to substantiate that claim.
Johnson said he suspected the briefing was designed to provide a pretext for portraying the Senate investigation as Russian-influenced once details reached the press.
“Because there was no substance to the briefing … I suspected that the briefing was being given to be used
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