House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on Wednesday said that the decade-long era of weaponization at the FBI and Justice Department undermined the spirit of the Constitution by impeding Congress’ duty and power to conduct oversight of the federal government. 

Earlier in the day, Jordan sent a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel demanding evidence related to the bureau’s counterintelligence operation codenamed “Round River,” which classified President Donald Trump’s own administration officials and political allies, including congressional Republicans, as “conduits” of Russian disinformation – in an apparent effort to tamp down a Ukrainian corruption scandal engulfing the Biden family during the 2020 election. 

As part of that operation, the FBI gave defensive briefings to members of Congress, arguing the lawmakers were spreading Russian disinformation by investigating corruption allegations against President Joe Biden, during his time as vice president, and son Hunter Biden in Ukraine.  

“So almost half the confidential human sources say that was a concern, and yet they said, ‘No, no, no, no, we're going to push that to the side,’ and the Justice Department said we're going to go instead say this is a Russian information operation, and they're using members of Congress as conduits to convey that Russian misinformation that they're trying to get out. That is ridiculous,” Jordan told the Just the News, No Noise TV show.

“So that is how ridiculous this whole thing became, and I think it really underscores when you talk about the weaponization of government and what they were up to in trying to protect Biden and harm President Trump. They were willing to go to that length, to that extreme, saying Republican members of Congress were conduits of Russian information misinformation,” he also said.

Jordan believes the era of weaponization, and infringement on Congress’s oversight powers, began even earlier, during the 2016 election when the FBI relied on the now-discredited Steele Dossier as predicate to spy on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. It extends through the tenure of Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith, whom Jordan argues interfered in the 2024 election to damage Trump’s 2024 campaign. 

“It's always been an effort by the government to help the Democrat candidate and harm the Republican candidate," the Ohio Republican lawmaker said. "In this case, each of the three times it was President Trump. That is not how our system is supposed to work. Not how our government's supposed to work.

“It started with the Clinton campaign telling a lie, and they built off of that, and then it was all the other stuff culminating in Jack Smith doing this to a separate and equal branch of government. That's how serious it is. So this has got to end. This is America, the greatest country ever. We don't operate this way, but unfortunately, it happened over the last decade."

The declassified documents released last month show the FBI and U.S. spy agencies received the derogatory evidence about the Bidens from the informants but that a group of FBI analysts launched Round River to reduce the impact of the Ukrainian corruption scandal engulfing his family during the 2020 election by formally designating Attorney General Bill Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, key members of Congress and journalists as the “conduits.”

One element of Round River was centered in the FBI's Pittsburgh Field Office and initially targeted Trump lawyer and former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani for his efforts to investigate Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine, but it then expanded to look at numerous public figures who spoke out about Biden family corruption concerns – including elected members of Congress. 

One of the documents, a spreadsheet that was recovered from U.S. intelligence agency files, shows that spy agencies and the FBI created a list of more than six dozen prominent organizations, Americans and foreigners who became figures in the Biden family Ukraine scandal and the 2019 impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.

The spreadsheet neatly divided figures along political lines, with Democrat politicians such as the Bidens, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Barack Obama and liberal megadonor George Soros listed as victimized “targets” of Russian disinformation and conservatives such as Fox News, One America News, filmmaker Michael Caputo and Giuliani as “conduit," Just the News previously reported. 

The FBI also labeled two of Trump’s first-term Cabinet secretaries as well as Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley, Ron Johnson and Lindsey Graham and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes as “conduits.” Jordan himself was also labeled a conduit while they all investigated whether the allegations of corruption against the Biden family were true. 

Jordan said the latest revelations are part of a larger pattern extending back to the 2016 election. 

“I always say it started in ‘16 with [ Peter] Strzok and [Lisa] Page, and you know what they did, the Clinton campaign, the whole thing we talked about. That's where it started, and … it culminated with Jack Smith,” Jordan said. 

The FBI’s Strzok and Page were intimately involved with the bureau’s Trump-Russia collusion probe.

“Jack Smith, his job was to … indict President Trump, go to trial and keep him from being president,” Jordan said. 

Congress found that Smith, during his investigation into the then-former president, accessed the contents of the private communications of more than 40 lawmakers and may have lied to lawmakers about it, raising Constitutional separation of powers concerns. 

The Speech or Debate Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 6) serves as a check on executive power and is designed to prevent members of Congress from being “questioned in any other place,” ensuring they cannot be subjected to the scrutiny of the Justice Department or the judicial branch for their legislative acts.

The scope of Smith’s probe, which centered on Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election results and the events of January 6, 2021, was expansive. Grassley, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, previously released records showing that Smith's office issued nearly 200 subpoenas in his sweeping Arctic Frost-linked case, secretly seeking records on more than 400 Republican personalities and groups—many closely connected to Trump, Just the News previously reported. 

Smith, who was appointed special counsel by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, also conducted a sweeping investigation into then-former President Trump over alleged mishandling of classified materials. Trump was later indicted in both cases, which were dropped after he won the 2024 presidential election and Smith resigned.

That investigation, which was codenamed “Arctic Frost,” was one of the four codenamed probes or operations targeting Trump and his allies. The Round River operation was one of those.