The Justice Department brought criminal charges Friday against two former senior FBI officials it says lied to Congress about the bureau's handling of the Hunter Biden laptop investigation — a case that lands less than two weeks before the November 3 midterm elections and reopens one of the most bitter controversies of the 2020 campaign.
Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, both former top officials on the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force, were each charged with one count of making a false statement. The pair self-surrendered Friday and made their first court appearance in Washington, DC, before Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui, who said in court that the charges are related to "Hunter Biden's laptop and allegations around that." Each faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
The J. Edgar Hoover Building, FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. Photo: ajay_suresh / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
The charges relate to statements Floris and Benavides made to the House Judiciary Committee in 2023, when Republicans were examining the FBI's election interference task force and its role in the Hunter Biden investigations. A criminal complaint unsealed Friday in DC federal court accuses the pair of "concealing [the task force's] engagement with and communications about the Hunter Biden investigations and impeding the congressional investigation."
DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced the charges on social media, writing that the alleged false statements concerned the officials' "roles on the Foreign Influence Task Force during the 2020 election." She added: "When senior FBI agents lie to Congress believing they are above the law, it's time to bring the hammer of justice down on them."
FBI Director Kash Patel said the charges grew out of an investigation into the since-dissolved task force, and claimed Floris is "on record privately claiming" to be running a shadow government.
Through their lawyers, both former officials denied wrongdoing. Attorneys for Floris said she is a "patriot" who served nearly 20 years as an FBI intelligence officer and called the charges "nonsense" filed "on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts," timed "on the eve of an election." The case has not yet been presented to a grand jury — charges in a complaint are allegations, and defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
Prosecutors allege that internal FBI messages and emails show the pair discussed Hunter Biden and his laptop frequently in the lead-up to the 2020 election — contradicting their congressional testimony. One of the officials reportedly claimed to have learned about the laptop investigation only from Wikipedia.
The laptop itself has shadowed American politics for six years. The FBI took possession of it in December 2019. The New York Post's October 2020 reporting on its contents — emails concerning foreign business dealings — collided with false warnings about Russian election interference, a public statement by 51 former intelligence officials challenging the story, and decisions by major social media platforms to restrict the reporting in the campaign's final weeks.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said the officials had briefed him and Senator Ron Johnson in August 2020 on matters related to their investigation of Hunter Biden, and that later actions falsely labeled the senators' work as advancing Russian disinformation. He called the charges "accountability efforts in action."
The Foreign Influence Task Force was disbanded in 2025. A further hearing in the case is scheduled for Tuesday.
The charges arrive in a Justice Department that has shown a willingness to pursue high-profile, politically charged cases: the same department is investigating former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both prominent Trump critics. Lawyers for the two former officials have said the timing — days before voters go to the polls — makes the prosecution look politically motivated. The department says no one is above the law.