Two Former FBI Officials Charged With Lying to Congress About Their Roles in Hunter Biden Probes

The Justice Department charged two former senior FBI officials on Friday, Oct. 23, with lying to Congress about what they did, or did not do, in investigations tied to Hunter Biden and his laptop.

Nikki Floris, 46, and Bradley Benavides, 56, each face one count of making a false statement, filed through a criminal complaint. Both surrendered and made their first appearance in federal court in Washington. Neither is being held while awaiting trial.

Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said in court that the charges relate to "Hunter Biden's laptop and allegations around that." A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday morning, Oct. 27.

What prosecutors allege

Both defendants worked on the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force, known as FITF, which the bureau has since dissolved. FBI Director Kash Patel said Floris led it as a Deputy Assistant Director from mid-2019 through mid-2022. Benavides was its Section Chief from mid-2019 through the 2020 election.

Patel said both testified that FITF was not involved in the Hunter Biden investigations. He said "documentary evidence, contemporaneous communications, and witness accounts" contradict that.

The Justice Department says it holds evidence that Benavides discussed the laptop story with others inside the FBI. That, it says, contradicts his testimony that he learned about it from Wikipedia. It also says it has evidence Floris discussed Hunter Biden with members of the task force, despite testifying that she had not.

A person familiar with the charges said they stem from transcribed interviews the pair gave the House Judiciary Committee in July and September 2023.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, whose office is prosecuting, said the evidence shows "their involvement in helping shape the public narrative about Hunter Biden's laptop right before the election." Patel also said Floris privately described herself as running a "shadow government" during the 2020 election. Neither claim is part of a charge as described so far. The only charges are the false-statement counts, and they are allegations, not findings.

The defense and the timing

Floris's attorneys rejected the charge in a statement. "Nikki Floris is a patriot. She served our nation as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years. Yet today, the DOJ has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts," they said.

They added: "It's no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election." They said they look forward to her day in court.

The complaint landed 10 days before the Nov. 3 midterms. It follows a string of high-profile Justice Department actions in the run-up to the election. The Associated Press described it as a rare criminal case against a former bureau employee. It also fits a broader effort by Patel to revisit episodes from the FBI's recent past that have long animated President Trump's base.

No court has weighed the evidence. Representatives for Benavides have not publicly responded, and no statement from him appears in the record so far.

The laptop backdrop

The New York Post published the laptop's contents in October 2020, saying it got a hard drive from Rudy Giuliani. The drive came from a computer dropped at a Wilmington, Delaware, repair shop. The emails appeared to show discussions of Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings.

Democrats and former intelligence officials raised the possibility of Russian disinformation at the time. The Trump administration's own intelligence community was then assessing that Russia was trying to interfere on Trump's behalf, and Giuliani had traveled abroad seeking dirt on the Bidens.

Republicans have long argued the FBI downplayed the laptop and Biden family corruption allegations. IRS whistleblowers later claimed the bureau slow-walked a Hunter Biden investigation. A Michigan gubernatorial candidate has repeatedly accused Floris of running a "shadow government" against Trump in 2020.

The formal record on Hunter Biden is narrower. Special counsel David Weiss investigated and recommended no charges beyond the federal tax and gun counts. Hunter Biden was convicted on those, and his father pardoned him around Thanksgiving 2024. Weiss's office also charged a government informant for giving false information alleging bribery in the Biden family.

What comes next

The case now turns on a narrow question: whether what Floris and Benavides told House Judiciary investigators in 2023 was knowingly false. The Justice Department says its documents and witnesses show it was. Floris's lawyers say the facts do not support the charge.

The next court date is Tuesday, Oct. 27, a week before voters go to the polls. The defendants have not yet entered pleas on the record.