FBI Renews Scrutiny Over Handling of 2020 Election Interference Allegation Against China
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WASHINGTON—The FBI has stepped up scrutiny over how it handled previously undisclosed documents containing source claims over alleged Chinese interference in the 2020 elections.
The documents, which the agency’s director declassified on June 16 and shared with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), were dated months before the 2020 presidential election. They show the FBI alerting federal agencies to fraudulent U.S. driver’s licenses from China being shipped to the United States—then recalling the advisory and asking for the file’s destruction, according to files The Epoch Times has obtained.
“This report was recalled in order to re-interview the source,” reads the recall document. “Recipients should destroy all copies of the original report and remove the original report from all computer holdings. Recipients should also ensure that any citation of the information in finished intelligence products draws on the SUBSTANTIVE RECALL of this report rather than the previous version.”
The FBI document cited a sub-source who claimed to have obtained information from unidentified Chinese officials.
The uncorroborated claim states that the Chinese regime produced a large number of fake driver’s licenses and “secretly exported” them to the United States, which would allow for “tens of thousands” of otherwise ineligible Chinese students and immigrants to cast fraudulent votes. It added that the regime had used private user data captured from TikTok accounts to produce the licenses and would use them for mail-in ballot votes.
The FBI added a caveat to the claim, noting in a comment that a person’s address information “was not a valid field when creating a TikTok account.”
“It was unspecified how China would attain US address data from the application,” the comment states. It noted that the source is “available for re-contact.”
“Thanks to the oversight work and partnership of Chairman Grassley, the FBI continues to provide unprecedented transparency at the people’s bureau,” Patel told The Epoch Times.
He described the allegations outlined in the document as “alarming.”
“Specifically, these include allegations of plans from the CCP to manufacture fake driver’s licenses and ship them into the United States for the purpose of facilitating fraudulent mail in ballots—allegations which, while substantiated, were abruptly recalled and never disclosed to the public,” he said, using the acronym for the Chinese Communist Party.
President Donald Trump, who has attributed his 2020 election loss to alleged voter fraud, highlighted the Chinese interference allegations as the FBI’s announcement about the files made headlines.
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“They use those cards to vote on the second election—my second,” he said. “Everybody here knows I won that election by a lot. But the only good thing I can say is this is a much, much more historic term than I think I could have had as a second term.”
Grassley has written to Patel for further documentation on the recall decision.
In a June 17 letter shared with The Epoch Times, he asked for all records relating to that re-interview and recall, “including but not limited to all communications between and among agents and intelligence analysts.”
He requested that Patel describe the investigative steps the agency has taken or planned to take to determine the veracity of the intelligence report, who made the recall decision, and why. Further, Patel should provide an explanation for why the FBI under Patel’s predecessor had ordered the destruction of the original report’s copy and whether such a practice is consistent with the FBI’s past and current practices, as well as the federal record preservation requirements.
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Asked about Grassley’s letter, Patel said he welcomes the request.
“Senator Grassley has been a tremendous partner in restoring accountability and transparency to the American people’s FBI and we look forward to continue working with him,” he told The Epoch Times.
Several high-level U.S. officials overseeing national security and intelligence under Trump had voiced concerns about Chinese election interference before and after the 2020 election.
In August 2020, then-White House National Security Adviser Robert O‘Brien said Chinese state-linked hackers were targeting U.S. election infrastructure, saying “they’d like to see the President lose” on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
