FBI Director Kash Patel told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that the “Round River” classification banner affixed to documents tied to an investigation of the Biden family was fabricated, confirming a suspicion that committee chair Chuck Grassley had raised in an August letter to the bureau’s leadership.
According to The Federalist, which first reported on the exchange, Patel testified that the bureau reviewed the classification process at Grassley’s request and found no policy basis for it. “We discovered that there was no FBI policy to substantiate such a classification, and that it was basically made up,” Patel said, adding that the bureau is now conducting an internal investigation through its Inspection Division into “the individuals who launched and codified this false and fake” classification.
The admission came during a wide-ranging oversight hearing that also touched on the bureau’s clearing of a backlog of nearly two million DNA samples and ongoing efforts to disrupt domestic terrorism plots.
What Round River Was
Grassley has described Round River as the name of an investigation run out of FBI headquarters in conjunction with the Foreign Influence Task Force. Whistleblowers have alleged that the team sought to “improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease,” according to the account Grassley laid out during the hearing.
In an August 17, 2026, letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche and the FBI director, Grassley wrote that some Round River documents carried banner markings identifying classified material, but that those banners listed “Round River” itself as a classification code — something he called “highly unusual if not outrightly improper.”
The Federalist has previously reported that the FBI’s coding system requires documents to first be marked Top Secret, Secret, Confidential, or Unclassified, with specific investigation names incorporated only for Special Access Programs. Grassley’s letter argued that “it appears the Wray FBI treated Round River as a Special Access Program when all accounts provided to us so far show no indication that it was in fact such a program.”
At Tuesday’s hearing, Grassley reminded the committee that Round River “was the operation that shut down certain government sources regarding the Biden family with apparently no justification,” and pressed Patel on what the bureau had done to investigate the classification irregularities. Patel credited the senator’s referral with prompting the review, and said the bureau has already produced nearly 2,000 pages of Round River documents, with more to come. He said the FBI is “committed to continue to produce” records in coordination with Grassley’s staff.
Prohibited Access Cases Eliminated
The hearing also addressed Grassley’s concerns about FBI files being hidden in what the bureau calls Prohibited Access and Restricted Access cases. Patel confirmed that such cases “were created just for that purpose — to evade transparency [and] to evade promulgation of FBI records that should be made available under FOIA and constitutional oversight.”
“I eliminated prohibited cases,” Patel said, adding that the bureau “will work with your committee to continue producing records for what used to be called prohibitive cases.”
Grassley made clear he was not yet prepared to draw firm conclusions about everything the committee has received. He said he is “not drawing a conclusion on all the records provided so far” as to whether the FBI fully investigated all allegations or “simply swept them under the rug for political purposes.”
Brady and Barr Weigh In
The Federalist reported that the questions raised by the Round River disclosures extend beyond FBI headquarters. In the run-up to the 2020 election, then-U.S. Attorney Scott Brady was tasked by then-Attorney General Bill Barr with vetting evidence related to the Bidens and Ukraine. Whistleblowers have alleged that FBI agents in Washington sought to bury reporting on potential Biden family corruption during that same period.
When The Federalist asked Brady about Round River, he said he was unaware the investigation existed. Given his tasking from Barr, Brady said he would have expected the FBI to provide his team with anything related to the Bidens and Ukraine. Asked whether he believed FBI headquarters had sabotaged his screening of that material, Brady offered a measured assessment: “The most generous reading is that the FBI in D.C. ‘slow walked’ my investigation,” he said, while allowing that it could also be seen as headquarters “actively interfering with my ability to investigate Burisma.”
Barr, for his part, told The Federalist he was unconcerned by last month’s release of a spreadsheet identifying him as a potential conduit for Russian disinformation. He noted that the Justice Department routinely sent material to the FBI for vetting on the assumption that some of it might be disinformation — which, he said, was precisely why it needed to be checked. That logic, he explained, was why he directed Brady to vet Biden- and Ukraine-related information in the first place, with the goal of ensuring Brady’s team saw everything, assessed it methodically, and determined its reliability.
“If there were people short-stopping the evidence from Scott Brady’s operation, that would have been antithetical to my tasking,” Barr said, describing such conduct as “sabotage.”
What Comes Next
Unresolved is the question of what exactly the Round River team placed in prohibited access files — or concealed behind the invented classification — and whether any of that material was improperly withheld from Brady’s review.
With the bureau now investigating those behind the use of the Round River code, and with Patel pledging to give Grassley access to documents previously held in prohibited access, the whistleblowers who accused the Foreign Influence Task Force of shutting down sources and sidelining information on the false assertion of Russian disinformation may also see their claims validated.
Source: thefederalist.com — https://thefederalist.com/2026/09/16/sen-grassley-vindicated-thrice-fold-on-alleged-scheme-to-hinder-biden-family-investigation/