Two former senior FBI officials were charged with lying to Congress after prosecutors said records show they discussed the Hunter Biden investigations while denying any part in them.
Story Highlights
- On Friday, October 23, former FBI officials Nikki Cole Floris and Bradley Benavides surrendered on arrest warrants in Washington.
- Each faces one count of lying to Congress about the bureau’s Hunter Biden investigations, including the laptop.
- Prosecutors say records, messages and witnesses contradict what the two told House investigators in 2023.
- The two ran the FBI task force that guarded the 2020 election from foreign meddling. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said the evidence shows “their involvement in helping shape the public narrative about Hunter Biden’s laptop right before the election.”
- FBI Director Kash Patel said one of the two “is on record privately claiming to be ‘running a shadow government’ during the 2020 election.” He did not say which one.
- Floris’s lawyers call her “a patriot” and call the charges “nonsense.”
What Prosecutors Say Happened
Floris, 46, of Alexandria, Virginia, led the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force as a deputy assistant director from mid-2019 to mid-2022. Benavides, 56, of Aiken, South Carolina, was the task force’s section chief from mid-2019 through the 2020 election. The task force led the bureau’s work to guard the 2020 election from foreign meddling. It has since been shut down. Prosecutors say the two officials hid their own role when Congress asked about it.
In 2023, the House Judiciary Committee interviewed both of them about the task force’s part in the Hunter Biden investigations, and each was warned that lying to Congress is a crime. According to the Justice Department, Floris said she was involved in no discussions about Hunter Biden while at the task force. Benavides said he learned the FBI had Hunter Biden’s laptop from a Wikipedia article in 2023. Prosecutors say a sworn statement filed with the charges shows otherwise: Floris routinely discussed the Hunter Biden investigations for more than a year, and Benavides regularly discussed the laptop with FBI officials in the run-up to the 2020 election.
The Defense Pushes Back
Floris’s lawyers answered quickly. “Nikki Floris is a patriot. She served our nation as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years,” they said. They said she was accused falsely “on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts,” called the charges “nonsense,” and objected that they were filed years later, “on the eve of an election.” They said they look forward to “Nikki’s day in court.”
Top officials struck a very different tone. Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., said, “Lying to Congress by anyone strikes at the heart of our democratic system.” She added that “no one is above the law, and we will hold accountable all who obstruct the truth.” FBI Director Kash Patel said one of the two “is on record privately claiming to be ‘running a shadow government’ during the 2020 election.” Patel did not say which of the two made that remark. “Weaponization will never be tolerated at this FBI,” he said.
Why The Laptop Still Matters
In the weeks before the 2020 presidential election, a newspaper reported that a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden had been left at a Delaware repair shop in 2019. Some of the data on it was later confirmed to be his. Republicans have long accused the FBI of mishandling the laptop and the investigations into Hunter Biden. Pirro said the evidence shows “their involvement in helping shape the public narrative about Hunter Biden’s laptop right before the election.”
Hunter Biden was later convicted on federal gun charges and pleaded guilty to tax crimes. His father, President Joe Biden, gave him a full pardon in December 2024. The new case does not reopen those charges. It asks whether two of the officials who handled the laptop issue told Congress the truth about their own part in it.
What Comes Next
Both former officials were charged under a federal law that makes it a crime to lie to Congress or a federal agency. The charges came by criminal complaint, which means prosecutors filed them before any grand jury voted on them. The Justice Department notes that the charges are only accusations, and each of the two is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.
The same day they surrendered, both appeared in federal court in Washington before Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui, a judge who handles the early steps of criminal cases. He noted that both have “sparkling backgrounds” in federal law enforcement and called the conduct “quite old.” Both are due back on Tuesday, October 27, for a preliminary hearing, where a judge decides whether there is enough evidence for the case to move forward.
Sources:
justice.gov, foxnews.com, cnbc.com, cbsnews.com, latimes.com, wxxinews.org
