Declassified records lift the veil on the debate preceding suppression of reports on China’s meddling.
WASHINGTON—Newly declassified documents illustrate attempts by foreign actors to influence U.S. elections and how some American intelligence agencies attempted to downplay election-related connections.
“I’m basically running a shadow government across the FBI at this point,” FBI agent Nikki Floris wrote in 2020 to a colleague whose name was redacted from the files, amid disagreements between various analysts and agencies about how best to frame intelligence reports related to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) role.
The documents were released by the White House on July 16 during President Donald Trump’s primetime address to the nation.
A long-time intelligence analyst for the FBI, Floris served as the agency’s election security lead for the 2020 elections. She was also managing all intelligence and strategic functions for the FBI’s counterintelligence program.
In 2022, she was appointed analyst in charge of the intelligence division of the agency’s Washington Field Office, the first person to hold that position.
While some analysts in the intelligence community were fighting to include language about China influencing U.S. elections in agency reports, Floris consistently argued against it. She pushed for a narrative that “there [was] no evidence of said intention,” although “we note there was an awareness of this potential effect,” she wrote in an email at the time.
“Another [expletive] IIR went out re election security,” Floris wrote in a Skype message on Sept. 25, 2020, alerting others in the agency about intelligence information reports distributed by other field offices—reports she deemed potentially problematic because of conflicting opinions on foreign interference among various agencies.
An agent identified as SC Benavides emailed a colleague on Sept. 25, 2020, informing them that the New York and Albany field offices had published two intelligence information reports, writing, “Neither of which should have gone out, in my opinion.”
A flurry of messages between agents ultimately resulted in the reports being recalled.
“This is moving fast,” one officer wrote to Floris. “He just notified me they will recall it. Boom mic drop.”
Floris responded shortly after, congratulating the team for their success in getting the contested reports rescinded, while also preparing for future incidents once the unidentified source who provided the information in question was interviewed again.
“Crisis averted!” she wrote. “We will stay engaged for when they track the source down again.”
Administration officials published the documents—many of which contain heavy redactions—on a new election integrity page on the White House website.
The information is divided into four categories: China’s acquisition and exploitation of American voter data; electronic voting and ballot counting systems’ vulnerabilities; the Michigan voter registration investigation; and the inclusion of noncitizens on state voter rolls.
‘Opportunistic Intrusions’
A CIA wire memo from July 2020, which included information from the FBI and the National Security Agency (NSA), reported that the CCP was targeting “personal e-mail accounts of senior U.S. leadership, including officials in the Executive Office of the President and high-ranking officials in multiple Executive Branch organizations, Congress, and the federal judiciary.”
