Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Justice Department seeking records about the FBI’s recall of a September 2020 intelligence report alleging that China manufactured and exported fraudulent U.S. driver’s licenses to help Chinese nationals cast fraudulent mail-in ballots for then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.
The lawsuit follows the FBI’s failure to respond to a July 10, 2025, FOIA request. Judicial Watch is seeking communications involving former FBI Deputy Assistant Directors Nikki Floris and Tonya Ugoretz concerning the report’s distribution and recall, the FBI’s efforts to assess the accuracy of its contents, and any subsequent investigative activity. Floris served in the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, while Ugoretz served in its Cyber Division.
According to internal FBI emails released in July 2025 by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, the FBI’s Albany Field Office issued an Intelligence Information Report on September 25, 2020, containing allegations that the Chinese government was producing and exporting fraudulent U.S. driver’s licenses as part of an effort to generate tens of thousands of fraudulent mail-in votes for Biden.
The report was issued one day after then-FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that the FBI had not historically seen a coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election. Internal emails indicated that officials raised concerns that the intelligence report would contradict Wray’s testimony. The report was subsequently recalled following intervention by FBI headquarters.
An Albany intelligence analyst later raised concerns about the decision, writing, “I found this troubling because it implied to me that one of the reasons we aren’t putting this out is for a political reason, which goes directly against our organization’s mission to remain apolitical.”
On October 8, 2020, an official with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force-China division confirmed that the unit had still not approved reissuing the report. The FBI later told Grassley on June 27, 2025, that it had “found no information to indicate that FITF-China aggressively investigated the reported information, despite corroborating intergovernmental reporting and logical investigative leads.”
Floris was charged in October 2026 with lying to Congress about investigations involving Hunter Biden.
Read the Judicial Watch Press Release
