The senator says he’s asking for additional documentation regarding an FBI effort to destroy the original report before Patel took over the agency.
WASHINGTON—Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is asking the FBI for additional records regarding alleged Chinese election interference files after finding that the agency had sought to destroy relevant information under its previous leadership.
FBI Director Kash Patel declassified and shared a file with Grassley a day earlier, an action Grassley said arose from the senator’s request for an intelligence information report from its Albany Field Office dated Sept. 25, 2020, according to a June 17 letter Grassley shared with The Epoch Times.
In the letter, directed to Patel, Grassley said that the intelligence report states it was “recalled in order to re-interview the source.”
It also states, “Recipients should destroy all copies of the original report and remove the original report from all computer holdings.”
“The document alleges serious national security concerns that need to be fully investigated by the FBI,” Grassley told The Epoch Times.
He asked Patel to provide all records relating to the re-interview and recall “all communications between and among agents and intelligence analysts,” in order to “better understand the decision-making process” of Patel’s predecessor’s FBI, he wrote in the letter. He specifically sought communication records among intelligence analyst Jordan Siri, supervisory special agent Charles Keller, and intelligence analyst in charge of the Washington Field Office Nikki Floris.
Floris, who previously worked on counterterrorism and counterintelligence at the FBI, has been the intelligence analyst in charge for the agency’s Washington field office since 2022. Grassley, in a May letter shared with The Epoch Times, said his office has been corresponding with Floris for years but had yet to receive any records from her regarding his requests.
Grassley also requested the FBI to “describe all investigative steps the FBI has taken, or will take, to determine the veracity of the allegations” in the intelligence report, the individuals who took the action, and the basis for it.
By Eva Fu
