Officials Sought to Downplay China's Link to 2020 Election

Newly declassified documents illustrate attempts by foreign actors to influence U.S. elections and by some American intelligence agencies to downplay election-related connections.

"I'm basically running a shadow government across the FBI at this point," FBI agent Nikki Floris wrote in 2020 to a colleague whose name was redacted from the files, amid disagreements between various analysts and agencies about how best to frame intelligence reports related to the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) role.