The Justice Department has charged two former senior FBI officials with lying to Congress about their roles in investigations involving Hunter Biden. Nikki Floris, 46, and Bradley Benavides, 56, each face one count of making false statements, in a 27 page criminal complaint unsealed in federal court in Washington on Friday. Both surrendered on arrest warrants and appeared before Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui, and prosecutors did not seek their detention. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, October 27.
The complaint centres on the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, the unit created after Russian interference in the 2016 election and dissolved after President Trump returned to office. Floris was its deputy assistant director from mid-2019 to mid-2022 and Benavides its section chief through the 2020 election. Prosecutors allege that witness accounts and documents from December 2019 to September 2021 show both knew about and were actively involved in the Hunter Biden investigations, including classified briefings for the case agents, and that an operation called Round River collected derogatory informant reporting on Hunter Biden to flag it as Russian disinformation.
Their 2023 testimony to the House Judiciary Committee is the alleged offence. Floris, asked whether she had any involvement in the Hunter Biden investigation, answered that she did not, the complaint says. Benavides told the committee he had learned some details of the laptop investigation from Wikipedia while preparing for the hearing. US Attorney Jeanine Pirro, announcing the charges, said evidence showed both helped shape the public narrative about the laptop before the 2020 election, and FBI Director Kash Patel said the case came from an investigation into the task force.
Floris’s attorneys called the charges false and said she was accused on the say so of politicians. It is no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election, they said. The allegations remain unproven, and Tuesday’s hearing is the first test of the complaint.