FBI Renews Scrutiny Over Handling of 2020 Election Interference Allegation Against China

WASHINGTON—The FBI has stepped up scrutiny over how it handled previously undisclosed documents containing claims of 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 that the FBI alerted federal agencies that fraudulent U.S. driver’s licenses from China were being shipped to the United States—then recalled the advisory and asked for the file’s destruction, according to files that The Epoch Times has obtained.

“This report was recalled in order to re-interview the source,” the recall document stated. “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 advisory in question was dated Aug. 24, 2020, weeks after U.S. authorities announced the seizure of nearly 20,000 counterfeit driver’s licenses that mostly came from China for college-age students. Customs and Border Protection said at the time that the fake identity documents could lead to identity theft and endanger critical U.S. infrastructure.

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 FBI stated in the comment.

It noted that the source is “available for re-contact.”

FBI Director Kash Patel produced the documents at the request of Grassley, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, who in May asked for an intelligence information report from the FBI’s Albany field office from Sept. 25, 2020.

“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 in a statement.

He described the allegations outlined in the document as “alarming.”

“Specifically, these include allegations of plans from the [Chinese Communist Party] 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.

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.

On June 18, Trump mentioned hearing the news about China and “tens of thousands” of ID cards.

“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, he asked that Patel provide an explanation for why the FBI under Patel’s predecessor ordered the destruction of the original report’s copy and whether such a practice is consistent with the FBI’s past and current practices and with federal record preservation requirements.

“The document alleges serious national security concerns that need to be fully investigated by the FBI,” he told The Epoch Times, urging the FBI to “do its due diligence” on the matter and inform the American public of its findings.

Asked about Grassley’s letter, Patel said he welcomes the request.

“Sen. 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 on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” “They’d like to see the president lose.”

Then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who currently serves as CIA director, said in January 2021 that he believed that China had “sought to influence the 2020 U.S. federal elections” based on “all available sources of intelligence.”

A report from the National Intelligence Council, released in March 2021, indicated that some intelligence officials believe that the Chinese regime tried to undermine Trump, although it puts the primary emphasis on Russian influence.

Jan Jekielek and Frank Fang contributed to this report.