{"id":327272,"date":"2026-08-22T07:37:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T07:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/327272\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T07:37:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T07:37:12","slug":"fbi-may-have-misclassified-biden-investigation-documents-to-keep-evidence-of-familys-crimes-a-secret-grassley-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/327272\/","title":{"rendered":"FBI may have ‘misclassified’ Biden investigation documents to keep evidence of family’s crimes a secret, Grassley claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014\u00a0Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)<\/a> has demanded the Justice Department and Office of the Director of National Intelligence release a trove of documents that were apparently \u201cmisclassified\u201d to \u201cdowngrade\u201d alleged wrongdoing by former President Joe Biden\u2019s family<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a Monday letter, Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) revealed that records obtained by Grassley\u2019s office indicated the FBI \u201cmisclassified information\u201d to obstruct congressional inquiries into Operation Round River, a bureau task force that compiled derogatory information<\/a> on Joe and Hunter Biden in the lead-up to the 2020 election.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo-date, the available records cause serious concerns about how federal law enforcement and the Intelligence Community used its resources to downgrade allegations of criminality relating to the Biden family apparently without sufficient investigation,\u201d Grassley and Johnson wrote to Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel and Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton.<\/p>\n

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) speaks at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, August 5, 2026. Michael Brochstein\/ZUMA \/ SplashNews.com<\/p>\n

\u201cThe records also cause concern about how federal records were stored and managed,\u201d the lawmakers added.<\/p>\n

The letter referenced an undated email from a FBI supervisory special agent that mentioned \u201cclassification caveats\u201d requested by the agency\u2019s Office of General Counsel \u201cbased on past experience with Crossfire Hurricane,\u201d the 2016 investigation into whether the Trump campaign illegally colluded with Russian officials.<\/p>\n

Under former Director Christopher Wray, the FBI apparently \u201cintentionally misclassified information a certain way which would result in more obstacles to obtaining access, whether it be Congress or the American people who sought it,\u201d the Republicans charged.<\/p>\n

The New York Post cover for Saturday, August 12, 2023, highlights the GOP crying whitewash as Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a Hunter Biden special counsel who already sought a lenient plea deal with the first son.<\/p>\n

Grassley\u2019s office also received other documents indicating the Round River team may have operated as a so-called Special Access Program, the output of which was given high degrees of classification.<\/p>\n

The operation appeared to serve as a clearinghouse for claims about the Bidens \u2014 including potential \u201ccriminal information<\/a>\u201d \u2014 that were then discredited as foreign disinformation likely originating from Russia.<\/p>\n

More\u00a0than 40 confidential human sources\u00a0provided information<\/a>\u00a0on the\u00a0Biden family<\/a>\u00a0to multiple FBI field offices, Grassley first revealed in October 2023.<\/p>\n

An image from Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop shows Hunter Biden and Joe Biden aboard a military aircraft on Saturday, March 19, 2022.<\/p>\n

Grassley noted in Monday\u2019s letter that he has been investigating Round River since July 2022 and much of the information he\u2019s received has been found \u201cparked away in a hidden classified compartment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Judiciary Committee chairman also noted that a December 2019 email from FBI Section Chief Tony Riedinger to FBI Supervisory Special Agent Joe Pientka appeared \u201cto corroborate existing public evidence that President Trump was the target of a political hit\u201d and should be \u201cdeclassified to the fullest extent possible under the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The letter from Grassley and Johnson did not clarify any details of the Riedinger message.<\/p>\n

Former President Joe Biden attended Mass at Saint Joseph on the Brandywine Church on Saturday, August 8, 2026, in Wilmington, Delaware. Kyle Mazza \/ CNP \/ SplashNews.com<\/p>\n

The White House Government Transparency Task Force last week declassified<\/a> a few Round River documents showing the FBI was seeking to \u201cred flag\u201d information from confidential informants about Biden family \u201ccorruption and other Ukraine-related topics.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an earlier letter Aug. 13, Grassley had also demanded the declassification of \u201ca key piece of information\u201d that Defense Department officials had shared about ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn during a 2017 briefing to Senate Judiciary Committee members.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time of the May 25, 2017, briefing, based on the\u00a0representations made by the DIA personnel, it appeared that even then, the public release of that\u00a0information would not have posed any ongoing risk to national security,\u201d he wrote to War Secretary Pete Hegseth and Defense Intelligence Agency Director James Adams.<\/p>\n

\u201cFurther, the declassification continues to be of public interest, and in the interest of\u00a0fairness to Lt. General Flynn,\u201d Grassley said.<\/p>\n

Reps for the DOJ, FBI and ODNI did not respond to Post requests for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014\u00a0Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has demanded the Justice Department and Office of the Director…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[116936,123125,7022,68,5970,874,9,11,10,87,2134,855,58],"class_list":["post-327272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-chuck-grassley","tag-classified-documents","tag-corruption","tag-exclusive","tag-fbi","tag-joe-biden","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-politics","tag-republicans","tag-senate","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}