Judge Dismisses Case Against Ex-FBI Officials Floris and Benavides, Finds No Probable Cause and Cites 'Weaponization'

Since the Justice Department announced charges against former FBI officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides on Oct. 23, the case has lost its obstruction add-on, its credibility in open court and, today, its legal footing.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui dismissed the criminal complaint from the bench in Washington on Monday, Nov. 2. He found the government had not shown probable cause that the two knowingly lied to the House Judiciary Committee in 2023 about their roles in the FBI's Hunter Biden investigations.

"What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization," Faruqui said during a ruling that ran roughly an hour.

What the judge found

Faruqui said the investigation was rushed and marked by "critical mistakes." Some of the statements prosecutors called false were not actually false, he said. Others could be explained by "honest mistakes of memory."

He also went after the timing. The alleged false statements date to 2023. The department waited three years, then charged about two weeks before the midterms, despite a longstanding DOJ practice of avoiding major investigative steps close to an election.

"I will not bury my head in the sand and pretend that I cannot read a calendar," he said.

The judge noted the investigation was opened the day after President Trump's primetime address in mid-July, in which Trump repeated claims about the 2020 election. FBI Director Kash Patel mandated the probe and tracked it closely, Faruqui said.

The testimony that undercut the case

At a days-long preliminary hearing last week, FBI Special Agent Bryan Witt testified that he worried the case was a distraction and could be "viewed as political." Faruqui called that "extremely troubling."

Witt also testified that a prosecutor on the case, Carlton Davis, acknowledged in a phone call that the complaint was flawed, according to NBC News' account of the hearing. Davis is a top aide to D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro. Her office did not immediately comment on the ruling.

The procedure drew its own rebuke. Prosecutors charged by criminal complaint, a tool usually reserved for situations needing speed, such as an imminent danger, a statute-of-limitations deadline or a flight risk. They did not go to a grand jury.

Last week, prosecutors filed a revised complaint adding an obstruction charge directly to the docket overnight, unsigned and without the court's approval. Faruqui said he had never seen that before and struck it from the record.

"Why today, on this one case, have you changed the entire history of how you charge cases?" he asked prosecutors at the hearing last Tuesday.

Faruqui also apologized to the government's trial lawyers, calling it "incredibly unfair" that they were assigned to defend a flawed case.

DOJ pushes back

The Justice Department rejected the ruling. A spokesperson said the department "disagrees with the Magistrate's decision, which remarkably appears to suggest that high-ranking government officials are immune from accountability for making materially false statements to Congress."

"We are evaluating all options but cannot comment further on an ongoing criminal investigation," the spokesperson said. "The Department's actions will continue to be guided by the facts, the evidence, and the law—not politics."

People on the right have long complained that the FBI mishandled Hunter Biden material before the 2020 election, and lying to Congress is a real federal crime. Prosecutors alleged Floris and Benavides made statements that were contradicted by internal FBI communications and witness accounts, and that both knew about and were actively involved in the investigations. Faruqui found that showing insufficient at this stage.

Floris and Benavides worked on the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force. Floris was formerly deputy assistant director of the Counterintelligence Division. After their arrest, Trump told reporters, "I heard they were bad people," without saying who told him.

A lawyer for Floris called the prosecution a "spaghetti-at-the-wall, Hunter-Biden-conspiracy fever dream." A lawyer for Benavides said the defense hopes DOJ will not seek a grand jury indictment, where "they get to be behind closed doors and get to shape the narrative, and we are unable to present our side."

What comes next

The dismissal does not necessarily end the matter. DOJ could still ask a grand jury to indict. Grand jurors in Washington have resisted politically charged cases, however. Most recently they rejected an attempted indictment of Cassidy Hutchinson, according to NBC News.

Whether DOJ goes back to a grand jury, appeals or lets the case lapse has not been announced. The decision lands one day before midterm voting, and the department has said only that it is weighing its options.