‘Shadow Government’ Strikes Again: FBI Secretly Branded Biden Corruption Critics As Russian Mouthpieces

The FBI secretly labeled journalists, senior Trump administration officials and members of Congress as conduits of Russian disinformation, newly declassified documents show.

An FBI operation codenamed “Round River” worked to paint derogatory information about former President Joe Biden, corruption and Ukraine supplied by confidential human sources as Russian disinformation. The so-called “Ukraine narrative” included information about the Biden family, Burisma, Hunter Biden and Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.

A White House Transparency Task Force helmed by journalist John Solomon declassified two document sets on Wednesday night: A slide deck describing the Round River operation from Trump’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and a spreadsheet of persons of interest in the operation.

The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The FBI’s distinction between “conduits” of Russian disinformation and “targets” of Russian disinformation is clear. The bureau classified Republicans as the perpetrators and Democrats as the victims.

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 Solomon were among the individuals the FBI smeared as instruments of a Russian psyop.

The FBI deemed Democratic powerbroker George Soros, former Secretary of State John Kerry, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as targets of the supposed psyop.

Solomon extracted the documents from FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) – Russia, which ran Operation Round River. FBI Director Kash Patel has dismantled the operation and launched a probe into its conduct, Solomon said.

A senior FBI official on that task force said that she was “basically running a shadow government inside the FBI right now” in September 2020, according to documents declassified in tangent with Trump’s primetime presidential address about election security in July. That official, Deputy Assistant Director for the Counterintelligence Division Nikki Floris moved to quickly retract a tip about Chinese election interference before it could move up the intelligence community hierarchy.

“AAAAAAAH SNAPS!!!! Well done [REDACTED] THANK YOU for handling!!!” she wrote after the Albany field office that received the tip retracted it before investigating.

One of the tactics the task force used to discredit concerns about Biden and Ukraine was to give defensive briefings to Congress, informing lawmakers that they were being used as tools of Russian propaganda.

In August 2020, as Senate Republicans were putting their final touches on a report about Hunter Biden’s financial connections to foreign governments, Floris and other FBI officials gave them a behind-the-scenes briefing alleging their work was “a target of Russian disinformation,” per a Senate letter.

The Senate investigators — Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson — said in the letter the FBI had not provided any evidence. They said they suspected the sole purpose of the briefing was for the unsubstantiated claim to be leaked to the media. Indeed it was eventually leaked to the Washington Post.

“Because there was no substance to the briefing … I suspected that the briefing was being given to be used at some future date for the purpose that it is now being used: to offer the biased media an opportunity to falsely accuse me of being a tool of Russia,” Johnson told the paper in response to the leak.

Confidential Human Sources

The ODNI slide deck includes some of the derogatory information that the FBI’s confidential human sources (CHS) flagged about the Biden family and Ukraine.

A Russian Intelligence Officer (RIO) said that Ukrainian oil tycoon and politician Mykola Zlochevsky was using Hunter Biden to insinuate himself into the powerful family as part of a “long-term operation.”

Another confidential human source flagged concerns about the Bidens’ investment in Burisma Holdings.

“Burisma Holdings owns thirteen companies, which are used to pay dividends on investments through fake consulting contracts,” the CHS told the FBI, the slide deck shows. “The contracts are paid to US investors and funneled through Latvia and the energy sector of Ukraine. Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, have money invested into Burisma. Their money was passed through a shell company in Latvia.”

The extent to which the FBI probed these leads is not immediately clear.

The Office of Joe and Jill Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment.