House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan is demanding that the FBI surrender every record connected to “Round River,” a counterintelligence operation that labeled Trump administration officials, Republican lawmakers, and political allies as “conduits” of Russian disinformation.
Jordan sent a letter Wednesday to FBI Director Kash Patel seeking evidence about the operation.
He argues that the bureau obstructed legitimate congressional oversight while working to protect Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election.
Round River reportedly treated members of Congress as channels for foreign propaganda because they investigated corruption allegations involving Biden and his son Hunter Biden in Ukraine.
The FBI also provided defensive briefings claiming those lawmakers were spreading Russian disinformation.
“So almost half the confidential human sources say that was a concern, and yet they said, ‘No, no, no, no, we’re going to push that to the side,’ and the Justice Department said we’re going to go instead say this is a Russian information operation, and they’re using members of Congress as conduits to convey that Russian misinformation that they’re trying to get out. That is ridiculous,” Jordan told the Just the News, No Noise TV show.
Jordan said the episode demonstrated how far federal officials were willing to go to shield Biden and politically damage President Donald Trump.
Instead of pursuing serious allegations, the bureau apparently placed suspicion on the lawmakers asking inconvenient questions.
“So that is how ridiculous this whole thing became, and I think it really underscores when you talk about the weaponization of government and what they were up to in trying to protect Biden and harm President Trump. They were willing to go to that length, to that extreme, saying Republican members of Congress were conduits of Russian information misinformation,” he also said.
Jordan believes the pattern began during the 2016 election, when the FBI relied on the discredited Steele Dossier to investigate Trump and his presidential campaign.
He says it continued through Special Counsel Jack Smith and his aggressive pursuit of Trump before the 2024 election.
“It’s always been an effort by the government to help the Democrat candidate and harm the Republican candidate,” the Ohio Republican lawmaker said.
“In this case, each of the three times it was President Trump. That is not how our system is supposed to work. Not how our government’s supposed to work. It started with the Clinton campaign telling a lie, and they built off of that, and then it was all the other stuff culminating in Jack Smith doing this to a separate and equal branch of government. That’s how serious it is. So this has got to end. This is America, the greatest country ever. We don’t operate this way, but unfortunately, it happened over the last decade.”
Documents declassified last month show that the FBI and American intelligence agencies received derogatory information about the Biden family from informants.
A group of FBI analysts nevertheless launched Round River and designated prominent officials, lawmakers, and journalists as suspicious conduits.
The operation included work from the FBI field office in Pittsburgh and initially focused on Rudy Giuliani.
The former New York City mayor and Trump lawyer had been investigating Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine when the bureau turned its attention toward him.
The inquiry then widened to include other public figures who raised concerns about Biden family corruption.
That group reportedly included Attorney General Bill Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Jordan, and several Republican members of Congress.
A spreadsheet recovered from intelligence files identified more than six dozen Americans, foreigners, and organizations connected to the Biden Ukraine scandal and Trump’s first impeachment.
The classifications broke along remarkably convenient political lines.
Democrats including Biden, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and liberal donor George Soros were portrayed as victimized “targets” of Russian disinformation.
Conservatives including Fox News, One America News, filmmaker Michael Caputo, and Giuliani were classified as a “conduit.”
The FBI also applied that label to Republican Senators Chuck Grassley, Ron Johnson, and Lindsey Graham, along with former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes.
Jordan received the same treatment while examining whether the Biden allegations had merit.
“I always say it started in ‘16 with [ Peter] Strzok and [Lisa] Page, and you know what they did, the Clinton campaign, the whole thing we talked about. That’s where it started, and … it culminated with Jack Smith,” Jordan said.
“Jack Smith, his job was to … indict President Trump, go to trial and keep him from being president,” Jordan said.
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Congress later found that Smith obtained private communications involving more than 40 lawmakers and may have misled lawmakers about that surveillance.
Those actions raised serious concerns involving the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, which protects lawmakers from executive branch scrutiny over legislative activity.
Records released by Grassley also showed that Smith’s Arctic Frost investigation issued nearly 200 subpoenas and sought information involving more than 400 Republican figures and organizations.
Smith also prosecuted Trump over classified documents and his challenge to the 2020 election.
Both cases disappeared after Trump won the 2024 election and Smith resigned, but Congress is still digging into how federal power was used against Trump, his allies, and elected lawmakers.
