Republican senators are pressing senior intelligence and law enforcement officials in the Trump administration to turn over classified records they say could reveal whether the FBI improperly labeled documents tied to allegations involving the Biden family.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson sent a formal request to the Justice Department, the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence seeking access to sensitive files connected to claims of possible misconduct by former President Joe Biden and members of his family.
According to the senators, the classified materials refer to allegations involving the Bidens, including long-running scrutiny of Hunter Biden’s overseas business activity in Ukraine during the period when his father served as vice president.
‘To-date, the available records cause serious concerns about how federal law enforcement and the Intelligence Community used its resources to downgrade allegations of criminality relating to the Biden family apparently without sufficient investigation,’ Grassley and Johnson wrote.
The letter was directed to Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel and Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton.
Dated Monday and first reported by the New York Post, the request singles out former FBI Director Christopher Wray, who led the bureau during both the Trump and Biden administrations, accusing his FBI of creating added ‘obstacles’ that made information related to the former Democratic president’s family and business dealings more difficult to access.
‘It appears that the Wray FBI intentionally misclassified information a certain way which would result in more obstacles to obtaining access, whether it be Congress or the American people who sought it,’ the Republicans wrote.
Grassley and Johnson said that after reviewing classified records obtained from the Trump administration, they found material that raises ‘legitimate questions about whether federal record laws and retention policies were followed.’
Two Republican Senators are asking for Trump administration officials to declassify FBI documents about Joe and Hunter Biden’s alleged wrongdoing leading up to the 2020 election
The Republicans allege in their letter that the FBI ‘misclassified’ files on its investigation into potential wrongdoing by the Bidens, codenamed Round River, to avoid congressional scrutiny. Above Joe and Hunter Biden are shown traveling together on a military aircraft
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Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk (R) and then-Vice President Joe Biden shake hands on November 21, 2014
Some of the files in question are email correspondence between top FBI officials in 2019 in which they discuss ‘classification caveats,’ noting how the Office of the General Counsel, the FBI’s legal arm, ‘directed us to classify our work this way.’
Certain files were classified with ‘Round River’ as a classification code, the Senators say, noting the peculiar designation.
Beginning in December 2019, Round River was an operation handled by the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force-Russia to compile intelligence on Biden and his family’s dealings in Ukraine.
Dozens of sources contacted by the FBI provided ‘criminal information’ on the Bidens, but that intelligence was later discredited as ‘foreign disinformation,’ Grassley has claimed.
The Republican Chairman has been investigating Round River since 2022, and he claims in his letter that former FBI Director Wray may have ‘intentionally withheld responsive records’ from Grassley’s past inquiries into the program.
‘The responsive information was parked away in a hidden classified compartment,’ the Senators allege.
Grassley and Johnson specifically requested that the Trump administration declassify the full contents of the 2019 FBI email they recently obtained and additional files on the Round River operation.
The over-classification of the Round River probe into Biden and his son Hunter Biden potentially created artificial barriers for Congress and the public to glean more information on the investigation, the Senators argue.
There has long been speculation about Hunter Biden’s 2014 appointment to the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy firm, despite not having any past experience in the sector.
The younger Biden was reported to have profited handsomely from the arrangement, which came around the time the elder Biden, then serving as Vice President, was overseeing the Obama administration’s political relationships with Ukraine.
The Office of Joe Biden did not immediately respond to Our News Outlet’s request for comment.
