The White House has released declassified intelligence files showing the FBI collected derogatory information on Joe Biden from at least 14 informants, then launched a covert operation to label that evidence as Russian disinformation before the 2020 election.
FBI Director Kash Patel disclosed the scope of the operation in a letter to the White House Government Transparency Task Force, confirming the bureau has terminated the unit responsible and opened an internal investigation into whether the secret program was used to shield Biden from accountability during his presidential campaign.
The operation, codenamed "Round River," began around December 2019 inside the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force, the Russia-focused unit based at FBI headquarters. A newly declassified summary from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence lays out how a group of analysts quietly assembled inside the unit, pulled years of informant reporting on Biden family corruption and Ukraine-related topics, and systematically flagged it as Russian propaganda, without ever determining whether the underlying allegations were true. Just the News first reported on the Round River probe earlier this year as one of four codenamed FBI operations targeting Trump and his allies.
The DNI summary, described as a 2025 memo declassified Wednesday, details how the Round River team operated. Analysts with administrative access to FBI reporting systems gathered every piece of derogatory intelligence previously reported by confidential human sources on Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company that hired Hunter Biden to its board, and related Ukraine matters. They then drafted intelligence products inserted into each informant's file to make it appear the reporting had been assessed as Russian disinformation.
Three confidential human source files were amended this way. The DNI summary states plainly:
"The team of analysts had administrative accesses to all reporting and drafted intelligence products that were later added to each CHS file to show the reporting was deemed Russian disinformation."
The summary also notes that the Round River team "did not corroborate any of the allegations of the 'Ukraine narrative.'" In plain English: the analysts never proved the informant reporting was false. They simply relabeled it.
That distinction matters. The Washington Examiner reported that at least 53 confidential sources were identified by the Round River operation, with 14 providing derogatory information specifically about Joe Biden. Patel told the task force the FBI would take "the unprecedented step" of providing all 53 sources' reporting so the facts could finally be reviewed in full.
The declassified DNI summary includes detailed descriptions of three informants whose files were altered. Their reporting spans years and covers allegations of bribery, shell companies, and foreign intelligence entanglements, all centered on the Biden family's ties to Burisma and its owner, Ukrainian energy executive Mykola Zlochevsky.
The first informant's work dated to 2012. That source began raising concerns about Burisma and Zlochevsky's intentions with the Bidens as early as 2015, after Hunter Biden joined the Burisma board while his father served as vice president. The informant reported that a Russian intelligence officer described the Zlochevsky-Biden relationship as "a long-term operation/long penetration," with Zlochevsky allegedly using his connection to Hunter Biden "to get closer to the Americans."
A second informant, active from 2017 through 2022, provided some of the most explosive allegations. That source reported Zlochevsky had paid a $100 million bribe to Poroshenko, then the president of Ukraine, to shut down an INTERPOL investigation. The bribe allegedly came in the form of shares and guaranteed profits from Ukrainian gas sales. The same source described a network of 13 Burisma-owned companies used to pay dividends through "fake consulting contracts," with funds routed through Latvia. Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, the informant reported, had money invested in Burisma through a shelf company in Latvia.
The FBI was not simply hearing from fringe tipsters. These were established confidential human sources with long working relationships with the government. A pattern of FBI investigative overreach during this period has become increasingly clear as more documents surface.
A third informant, working on and off for the government since 2008, provided Biden-related intelligence in October 2019, just weeks before Round River launched. That source told handlers about a personal relationship with Hunter Biden, saying Hunter had consulted the informant before deciding to work for Burisma. The source also described being offered access to a Ukrainian government investigation into Burisma through a figure named Yuri Boyko.
All three files were retroactively amended by the Round River team to cast the reporting as Russian disinformation.
Among the released documents is a spreadsheet listing more than six dozen prominent Americans, organizations, and foreigners connected to the Biden-Ukraine scandal and the 2019 Trump impeachment proceedings. The Foreign Influence Task Force divided them into two categories: "targets" of Russian disinformation and "conduits" who allegedly spread it.
The "target" column included Democrats and Biden-aligned figures: Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and George Soros. These individuals were framed as victims of Russian influence operations.
The "conduit" column read like a roster of the FBI's political opponents. Attorney General Bill Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Senators Chuck Grassley, Ron Johnson, and Lindsey Graham, Representatives Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan, Fox News, One America News, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and filmmaker Michael Caputo all appeared on the list. So did John Solomon, the journalist who co-authored the report and who now chairs the White House Government Transparency Task Force.
The task force concurred with every assessment on the spreadsheet with a "no objection" designation. Many of the Americans listed were identified as potential candidates for "defensive briefings", meetings in which FBI officials would warn the targets that they were being fed Russian disinformation. Grassley and Johnson have said for years that they believe the FBI used those briefings not to protect them, but to discourage their investigations into Burisma and Biden family corruption.
The operation also reached into the Justice Department's own work. Barr had named a U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh to investigate Burisma-related allegations. The Round River team directed the FBI's Pittsburgh field office in connection with that inquiry, raising the question of whether FBI headquarters used a counterintelligence label to interfere with a legitimate criminal investigation ordered by the attorney general.
FBI Director Patel's letter to the transparency task force confirmed he has terminated the Foreign Influence Task Force entirely. He wrote that the bureau is now investigating whether the unit "used information learned from the Round River assessment to undermine or influence ongoing investigations by only focusing on the subset of CHS's involving the Bidens."
Patel also flagged the defensive briefings as a concern. He said the bureau "remain[s] concerned that defensive briefings to Congress may have been overly focused on just Biden and Ukraine rather than the balanced picture of all foreign threats." That language suggests the FBI may have weaponized a routine security procedure to steer lawmakers away from politically inconvenient facts.
The director pledged the FBI is "firmly committed to identifying, investigating and holding accountable all abuses" from Round River and ensuring "that future counterintelligence operations remain focused exclusively on legitimate foreign threats and are never used to advance political narratives." The bureau has not yet announced any disciplinary actions or criminal referrals stemming from the review.
Congressional Republicans who have demanded accountability from intelligence officials for concealing information from elected leaders will likely view the Round River disclosures as confirmation of what they have alleged for years: that the FBI's counterintelligence apparatus was turned inward against domestic political actors, not outward against foreign adversaries.
The Round River disclosures land alongside other recently declassified material. Earlier this month, the White House released documents exposing a separate FBI operation codenamed "Oxferd Comma," launched in 2017 on the theory that President Trump may have been acting as a Russian asset when he fired FBI Director James Comey. Just the News reported in March that Round River was one of four codenamed FBI probes targeting Trump and his supporters.
The FBI's internal culture during this period has drawn sustained scrutiny. The bureau fired analysts who authored a memo treating Catholic religious practice as a domestic threat indicator, another instance in which headquarters personnel appeared to let political assumptions drive intelligence work.
The Biden family's legal exposure has continued to mount through other channels. Two IRS whistleblowers came forward to Congress beginning in 2023 with evidence that Hunter Biden committed crimes. Hunter Biden was later convicted of tax and gun charges, though his father pardoned him before leaving office. The House Oversight Committee concluded its impeachment probe in August 2024, finding that Joe Biden engaged in impeachable conduct by helping enrich his family. Hunter Biden has publicly denied key elements of the allegations against his family.
Round River adds a different dimension. The question is no longer just whether the Biden family profited from foreign connections. It is whether the FBI actively worked to ensure voters never learned the answer before they cast their ballots in 2020.
An intelligence agency that buries its own informants' reporting to protect a presidential candidate is not fighting foreign influence. It is exercising it.
