Nikki Floris, a former senior FBI counterintelligence official who helped oversee election security in 2020, wrote that she was “basically running a shadow government across the FBI” as the bureau recalled a report alleging China was manufacturing fraudulent driver’s licenses for a mail-in ballot scheme.
President Donald Trump invoked the same “shadow government” language during his primetime address on Thursday, when he accused federal officials of concealing intelligence about Chinese election interference from his administration. Trump did not name Floris, but newly declassified FBI messages identify her as the author of the remark.
“One email among intelligence analysts admitted that they had, quote, deliberately massaged the presidential daily briefing to withhold information regarding Chinese activities related to the election,” Trump said. “Another official inside the FBI wrote that she was running, quote, a shadow government, unquote, to keep intelligence about China’s election meddling from becoming known.”
The Sept. 25, 2020, exchange shows Floris telling a colleague that an Intelligence Information Report, or IIR, concerning China had been recalled.
“[T]alkign [sic] to PDB briefer … she is also asking if there was a reevision on the russia one,” one of Floris’s colleagues asked her, according to the full transcript released by the Trump administration Thursday.
Floris supplied the report’s serial number, discussed whether a revision had been issued, and said the FBI was preparing a directive requiring field offices to route all election-related reports through bureau headquarters and its Foreign Influence Task Force.
“I’m basically running a shadow government across the FBI at this point,” Floris wrote.
Floris was then a deputy assistant director in the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. An FBI press release said she served at the time as the bureau’s election security lead for the 2020 presidential contest.
The recalled China report
The IIR at the center of Floris’s exchange contained a confidential-source allegation that Chinese officials were producing fraudulent U.S. driver’s licenses to create tens of thousands of mail-in ballots for former President Joe Biden.
The FBI document cautioned that it did not contain finally-evaluated intelligence and said the reporting had not been fully assessed or integrated with other intelligence. But records later released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) show FBI headquarters ordered the report recalled shortly after it was disseminated.
Grassley’s Senate Judiciary Committee release said Floris was among the headquarters officials involved in the recall request. The committee said the move prevented other FBI field offices and intelligence agencies from accessing and studying the report.
According to Grassley, the FBI’s stated reason for recalling the report was concern that its contents would contradict then-FBI Director Christopher Wray’s congressional testimony.
An FBI analyst in Albany objected internally to the decision, saying the concern about political implications was troubling and inconsistent with the bureau’s responsibility to remain apolitical.
A sharp contrast from 2016 Russia scrutiny
The episode is likely to intensify Republican frustrations years after years of a seemingly two-tiered approach to foreign-election intelligence.
Democrats and FBI officials spent years emphasizing Russian interference in the 2016 election and investigating possible connections to Trump’s campaign. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation did not establish that Trump campaign members conspired or coordinated with the Russian government’s election-interference activities after years of aggressive investigating and millions of dollars spent, although it documented Russia’s own interference efforts.
The Justice Department inspector general later identified significant inaccuracies and omissions in the Carter Page FISA applications, including evidence that raised questions about the reliability of Steele dossier reporting used in the applications.
Floris herself testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Oct. 22, 2019, that Russia and China posed a “pervasive and persistent threat” to the United States. But when Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA) asked whether the FBI had seen anything “to the extent of actively trying to hack into or interfere with the electoral system,” Floris replied: “To date, sir, we have not seen anything specific regarding hacking into the electoral systems of the 2020 elections.”
Cline’s question concerned detected hacking of election systems nearly a year before the recalled China report, while the new records concern alleged influence activity, voter-data collection, and the FBI’s handling of intelligence. Additionally, her testimony came nearly a year before the recalled IIR.
However, the sequence in the context of her previously unseen remarks raises questions about the bureau’s posture toward Chinese election threats and how much it disclosed to the Trump administration and the public.
Life after FBI and Hunter Biden controversy
Floris joined the FBI as an intelligence analyst in 2005 and served on the director’s daily briefing staff, helping prepare executive-level briefing documents, according to the bureau.
She moved into the Counterintelligence Division in 2018 as deputy assistant director of its Intelligence Branch. In 2022, Wray named Floris intelligence analyst in charge of the Washington Field Office’s Intelligence Division, the first person to hold that role.
FBI Director Kash Patel forced Floris out of the FBI in May 2025. She now works as Microsoft’s director of insider risk, according to her LinkedIn profile, which has since been hidden from the public. The Washington Examiner contacted Microsoft for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Floris had previously drawn scrutiny from congressional Republicans over the FBI’s handling of their Hunter Biden investigation. In August 2020, she and FBI official Bradley Benavides briefed Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) regarding the senators’ inquiry into the Biden family’s foreign business dealings.
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Grassley and Johnson later argued that the briefing was unnecessary and was leaked in a manner that falsely portrayed their investigation as Russian disinformation. In a 2022 request to interview Floris and Benavides, the senators said the episode frustrated and obstructed their oversight.
While she was still in the bureau, Floris notably succeeded Jennifer Moore, a former FBI intelligence official accused of helping remove whistleblowers during the Biden administration. Floris also worked under former Assistant Director in Charge Steven Jensen, who led several high-profile Jan. 6 investigations before Patel fired him from the bureau last August.