“Another f***ing IIR went out re election security.”
That shocking remark came from Nikki Floris, the FBI’s Foreign Interference Task Force Lead, in late September 2020. It wasn't a call to action against foreign adversaries but a complaint about a vital tip concerning potential Chinese election interference in the upcoming presidential contest between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. According to newly declassified documents, Floris, an official within the FBI Counterintelligence Division, immediately moved to retract the intelligence.
The bombshell documents, personally declassified by President Trump, were revealed during a prime-time presidential address on Thursday night. They include an internal investigation, reportedly conducted last year under Trump’s FBI Director Kash Patel, scrutinizing the unusual and politically motivated retraction.
“Raw intelligence obtained by the FBI in 2020, yet buried by rogue bureaucrats, stated that China’s activities even included an attempt to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden,” President Trump declared, exposing the alarming extent of the alleged cover-up.
Adding to the scandal, President Trump referenced another FBI official who, in an apparent nod to Floris’s brazen actions, wrote that she was running a “shadow government” to suppress intelligence about China’s election meddling. Trump announced he had ordered criminal investigations into certain officials, though it remains unclear if Floris is among those under scrutiny.
The original tip, transmitted from the FBI’s Albany Field Office to internal servers, detailed allegations that the Chinese government had exported thousands of fraudulent driver's licenses to the U.S. with the explicit purpose of creating illegal mail-in ballots. This crucial intelligence was never investigated.
Floris's efforts to quash the explosive tip went even further. While she worked to retract the report, FBI headquarters in Washington D.C. instructed every field office to route all foreign election interference reports directly to Floris’s team for micromanagement. “We’ll get this back in a box!” she boasted to her colleagues, signaling her intent to control the narrative.
Floris could not be reached for comment, and her LinkedIn page has been conspicuously deleted. A request for comment sent through her current employer, Microsoft, did not receive an immediate reply. Funny how that always seems to happen when accountability comes knocking.
The extent of her self-described power was laid bare in an exchange when another FBI official inquired about the critical China tip for the Presidential Daily Brief. “It’s been retracted,” Floris curtly replied. She then brazenly added, “I am basically running a shadow government inside the FBI right now.” The other official’s response? “Do what you have to do :).” And there it is. A clear admission of operating outside the normal chain of command, with apparent approval.
These declassified documents illuminate a clear, disturbing motive behind the redaction: senior FBI officials in Washington were desperate to avoid contradicting the sworn testimony of then-FBI Director Christopher Wray. Wray had told the Senate in July 2020 that he saw no evidence of widespread mail-in voter fraud.
“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 claimed, a statement that now appears to have been fiercely protected by his subordinates, even at the cost of election integrity.
Senator Gary Peters, the top Democrat on the committee, pressed Wray on the issue, asking if his answer was clear that he had not seen any widespread fraud by mail. Wray affirmed, “That is something that we would investigate seriously.” The documents, however, unequivocally demonstrate that the FBI did not, in fact, investigate all tips about mail-in election fraud seriously.
This wasn't Floris’s first foray into election interference. Roughly one month before she suppressed the China report, she actively promoted a false narrative about Russian interference. In August 2020, as Senate Republicans, led by Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, finalized a report on Hunter Biden’s financial connections to foreign governments, Floris and other FBI officials gave them a back-channel briefing. Their unsubstantiated claim? That the Senate’s legitimate investigative work was “a target of Russian disinformation.”
Grassley and Johnson vehemently stated the FBI provided no evidence for this claim. They suspected the briefing’s sole purpose was to generate a leak to the media — and sure enough, it was eventually leaked to The Washington Post. Senator Johnson powerfully rebuked the tactic: “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 the biased media an opportunity to falsely accuse me of being a tool of Russia.” By October 2020 it had already confirmed the authenticity of a key Hunter Biden email, exposing the FBI’s and media’s coordinated efforts to discredit truthful reporting.
The declassified documents paint a damning timeline of Floris’s swift action to retract the critical report and the Albany office’s pressured acquiescence. Despite pushback from an official in the FBI’s criminal investigative division, who asserted the tip met all standard requirements for investigation, a top Albany official warned the issue “may be elevated” and that his superiors were “aware of the interest.”
When the Albany field office eventually moved to retract the report, Floris’s glee was evident: “AAAAAAAH SNAPS!!!! Well done [REDACTED] THANK YOU for handling!!!” she wrote, celebrating the suppression of vital intelligence.
Floris’s actions raise profound questions about the true purpose of the Foreign Interference Task Force, which Director Wray had established in 2017. While the official reason given for retracting the report was to conduct a new interview with the confidential human source, some FBI officials explicitly cited concern about contradicting Wray’s testimony as the primary driver.
“Based on the conflict of this information to that of the wider USIC, the fact that it contradicts Director Wray’s testimony to Congress, and the importance to the current administration, I think we should… treat [the tip] like it will be going in front of the President,” one official stated, revealing the political motivations at play. Another official candidly wrote, “Again, the reporting will contradict Director Wray’s testimony.”
One official raised a crucial ethical red flag, noting, “My concern is that I think it gets dangerous if we cite potential political implications as reasons for not putting out our information.” This voice of reason, however, was clearly ignored. Despite initial attempts by the FBI to republish the tip, Floris’s Foreign Interference Task Force overruled them, ensuring the report remained suppressed. Finally, in late October 2020, just days before Election Day, the draft of the critical tip was entirely deleted.
This disturbing saga underscores a pattern of partisan manipulation within America’s most sensitive intelligence agencies. The American people deserve full transparency and accountability when government officials actively suppress information that impacts the integrity of our elections, especially to protect the political narratives of those in power. This is precisely the kind of Deep State corruption that President Trump and the America First movement have vowed to dismantle, ensuring our institutions serve the people, not a ‘shadow government’ dedicated to undermining truth and democracy.
