According to a newly declassified FBI letter obtained by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the FBI headquarters shut down a 2020 investigation into allegations that China attempted to interfere in the 2020 presidential election by shipping fake driver’s licenses to the United States after concluding that the intelligence would contradict then-director Christopher Wray’s sworn testimony to Congress.
A June 27 letter to Grassley, sent by Assistant FBI Director Marshall Yates, outlines how officials at the FBI’s headquarters ordered the recall of an Intelligence Information Report just one day after Wray told Congress on Sept. 24, 2020, that the bureau had not identified any coordinated voter fraud. The Albany Field Office had submitted the IIR based on a source’s claim that the Chinese Communist Party sent fake U.S. driver’s licenses to sympathizers in the U.S. who would vote for then-candidate Joe Biden.
FBI leadership instructed agents to destroy all copies of the report and delete it from all computer systems, according to the recall notice. Although the source was later reinterviewed and confirmed additional details, the bureau still refused to republish the intelligence.
“One reason cited for not releasing the IIR was because ‘the reporting will contradict Director Wray’s testimony,’” Yates wrote in the letter.
In that testimony, Wray had claimed the bureau had not seen “any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort.” He added that the Chinese were expanding influence operations but did not mention specific interference involving fake IDs.
The source, a China-based individual who was not a member of the Chinese Communist Party, was considered reliable by field agents. An Albany officer partially corroborated elements of the claim, and FBI records confirm that the FBI never shut down the source for lack of credibility. Nevertheless, the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force declined to pursue the information or issue a new report, even as agents raised alarms internally.
Internal emails released to Grassley and declassified by current FBI Director Kash Patel show Albany agents objected to the decision. One wrote: “I found this troubling because it implied to me that one of the reasons we aren’t putting this out is for a political reason, which goes directly against our organization’s mission to remain apolitical.”
Notably, Yates’s letter revealed that, in the wake of this incident, FBI leadership instituted a new policy requiring that “all raw reporting concerning the election will now require HQ coordination, which was not required before.”
Field agents pushed back. Internal emails from the Albany office questioned the recall, warning it was dangerous “if we cite potential political implications as reasons for not putting out our information.”
Yates acknowledged the Albany team’s objections. “It was not the role of analysts to align intelligence with public testimony,” Yates wrote. “Suppressing field-generated reporting could deprive other IC [intelligence community] elements of the opportunity to corroborate or discredit intelligence.”
Customs and Border Protection data bolstered the initial allegations. In the first half of 2020, CBP seized nearly 20,000 fake U.S. driver’s licenses, most from China and Hong Kong, at the Chicago O’Hare mail facility. The FBI documents do not link the seizures directly to the alleged voting scheme, but investigators said they provided “logical investigative leads” that were never pursued.
Wray also stated in his testimony that the FBI would “aggressively” investigate any incidents that revealed evidence of widespread voter fraud efforts. “That is something that we would investigate seriously,” he said at the time.
In response to Yates’s revelations, Grassley blasted the bureau, saying the documents “smack of political decision-making” and show Wray’s FBI “turned its back on its national security mission.” He praised Patel’s transparency and called for a full accounting of the bureau’s actions.
Adding more fuel to Grassley’s frustrations, Wray’s establishment of the FTIF coincided with a statement on his goal to “identify and counteract malign foreign influence operations targeting the United States.
“Chris Wray’s FBI wasn’t looking out for the American people; it was looking to save its own image.”
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In early February, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the closure of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, created by Wray in 2017 under the first Trump administration. Bondi cited a need to “free resources to address more pressing priorities and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion.”
Grassley suggested that move was much needed in light of the latest revelation about the bureau’s efforts to shroud the alleged Chinese 2020 election influence operation, calling it “a positive step, given what the task force had been twisted into.”
