Judicial Watch said Wednesday that it filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the FBI and Justice Department for the bureau's records related to its recall of a September 2020 intelligence report.

FBI Director Kash Patel previously claimed the bureau's past leadership "chose to play politics" and hide evidence from the American people of a Chinese plot to hijack the 2020 U.S. election with fake mail-in ballots for Joe Biden.

The bureau reportedly gave Congress a long-hidden intelligence report last year that raised concerns China had mass-produced fake U.S. driver's licenses to carry out a scheme to swing the election.

The report was recalled after emails indicated officials were concerned intelligence in the report would contradict testimony given by then-FBI Director Christopher Wray, who had told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in 2020 that the FBI had not historically seen a coordinated national voter-fraud effort in a major election.

The lawsuit was filed after the FBI failed to respond to Judicial Watch’s FOIA request from last year that sought the communications of former FBI Deputy Assistant Directors Nikki Floris and Tonya Ugoretz about the report’s dissemination and recall, the FBI’s efforts to assess the accuracy of its contents and any subsequent investigative activity.

“The FBI appears to have put politics ahead of its duty to investigate potential Chinese election interference,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “The American people deserve to know what the report revealed and who ordered it buried.”

The suit also comes after Floris, who served as deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, was charged with lying to Congress about Hunter Biden investigations earlier this month.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.