FBI documents show agency sat on intel on potential China plan to meddle in 2020 election for Biden

The FBI has located internal documents showing that it did not pursue intelligence indicating that Communist China was looking to hijack the 2020 presidential election with a potential mail-in ballot scheme to assist then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden because the bureau feared that would undercut then-FBI Director Christopher Wray’s assurances to Congress that foreign meddling did not pose a threat to the presidential race, officials told Just the News.

The documents showing the internal conversations and deliberations are being transmitted to Congress, the officials told Just the News on Wednesday, and Attorney General Pam Bondi is expected to address the allegations as early as Wednesday during a Senate Appropriations hearing.

The FBI memo detailing an alleged Chinese plot to meddle in the 2020 election was recalled from the rest of the U.S. intelligence community’s spy agencies because it conflicted with Wray’s assurances that foreign interference would likely not impact the upcoming presidential race, the officials told Just the News. And the FBI did not follow up on the claims in the FBI memo even after re-interviewing the originating source of the meddling allegations – because of the same concerns about undercutting Wray.

Wray testified in September 2020 before the House and Senate, before which he downplayed the potential for significant foreign meddling in the 2020 election, dismissed the possibility of foreign mail-in ballot fraud, and said he considered disinformation to be the biggest threat to the presidential election.

FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino alleged Tuesday that the bureau's prior leadership "chose to play politics" and hide evidence from the American people regarding a Chinese plot to hijack the 2020 U.S. election with fake mail-in ballots for Biden.

The statement from the two FBI leaders came a week after Just the News reported Patel turned over to Congress earlier this month a long-hidden intelligence report raising concerns that China had plans to mass-produce fake U.S. driver's licenses to carry out a scheme to swing the 2020 election to Biden with fake mail-in ballots.

Patel located the evidence based on information that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, got from whistle-blowers and forwarded it to the FBI, officials said.

Patel and Bongino said Tuesday they are committed to getting Grassley and the American public more evidence about the plot and the failure to fully investigate it.

“Based on our continued review and production of FBI documents related to the CCP’s plot to interfere in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, previous FBI leadership chose to play politics and withhold key information from the American people — exposing the weaponization of law enforcement for political purposes during the height of the 2020 election season," Patel and Bongibo said in a statement given to Just the News on Tuesday.

Just the News published a story last week revealing that a confidential human source told FBI counter-intelligence in the summer of 2020 that China’s communist government was seeking to meddle in the impending election to help then-candidate Biden, according to a raw intelligence report distributed to federal agencies that was reviewed and made public by Just the News.

The raw and unverified intelligence report was bluntly titled “Chinese Government Production and Export of Fraudulent US Driver's Licenses to Chinese Sympathizers in the United States, in Order to Create Tens of Thousands of Fraudulent Mail-in Votes for US Presidential Candidate Joe Biden, in late August 2020.”

The report was soon recalled, with spy agencies told to delete the information before they had a chance to properly investigate its claims.

The FBI information report revealed by Just the News last week had been sent as an uncorroborated advisory to U.S. intelligence agencies on August 24, 2020. It was then suddenly recalled in September 2020 — the day after then-FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress that he had not seen any large-scale voter fraud efforts — with little explanation other than the bureau wanted to “re-interview” the source, the documents stated.

The recall notice specifically asked spy agencies to erase or delete the original intelligence memo, the memos show.

“This report was recalled in order to re-interview the source. Recipients should destroy all copies of the original report and remove the original report from all computer holdings,” the recall notice stated.

Officials previously told Just the News the recall kept the FBI and other agencies from fully investigating allegations that Beijing was trying to meddle in the U.S. election to Biden’s benefit, though potential corroborating evidence came in from a fellow law enforcement agency. 

Wray pointed to Russia as the biggest election influence threat and downplayed the possibility that foreign adversaries could facilitate voter fraud in the 2020 election when speaking to the House in mid-September 2020.

“The intelligence community’s consensus is that Russia continues to try to influence our election primarily through what we would call malign foreign influence,” Wray told the House Homeland Security Committee in mid-September 2020, arguing that “we will not tolerate foreign interference in our election.”

Wray said that "we have not seen, to date, a coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election.”

When asked about his biggest concern related to election security in 2020, Wray replied, “What concerns me the most is the steady drumbeat of misinformation and sort of amplification of smaller cyber intrusions that contribute over time — I worry they will contribute over time to a lack of confidence of American voters and citizens in the validity of their vote. I think that would be a perception, not reality. I think Americans can and should have confidence in our election system and certainly in our democracy.”

Trump took to his Twitter account to critique Wray’s comments.

“But Chris, you don’t see any activity from China, even though it is a FAR greater threat than Russia, Russia, Russia,” Trump wrote in 2020, adding, “They will both, plus others, be able to interfere in our 2020 Election with our totally vulnerable Unsolicited (Counterfeit?) Ballot Scam. Check it out!”

Wray appeared before the Senate Homeland Security Committee in late September 2020, where he was asked if voting by mail was secure.

“Well, senator, what I think I would say is this: we take all election-related threats seriously… and our role is to investigate the threat actors. Now, we have not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it is by mail or otherwise,” Wray said. “Certainly to change a federal election outcome by mounting that kind of fraud at scale would be a major challenge for an adversary, but people should make no mistake, we're vigilant as to the threat and watching it carefully because we're in uncharted territory.”

The FBI director was asked if he was saying that he had not seen any widespread fraud by mail, and Wray vowed that “that’s something we would investigate seriously and aggressively.”

The FBI information report containing allegations of a Chinese plan to use thousands of fraudulent driver’s licenses to help Biden defeat Trump was recalled shortly after Wray’s congressional testimony.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had said in July 2020 that “fraudulent driver’s licenses … continue to be found by CBP officers” at Chicago O’Hare International Airport. From January through June 2020, CBP said its officers had “seized 1,513 shipments with fraudulent documents — a total of 19,888 counterfeit US drivers’ licenses” and that “the majority of these shipments were arriving from China and Hong Kong.” The CBP press release did not directly link the fraudulent licenses to potential voter fraud efforts.