Former FBI Officials Charged Over False Statements in Hunter Biden Probe
Federal prosecutors have charged two former FBI officials with lying to Congress during lawmakers’ investigation into the bureau’s handling of Hunter Biden and his laptop ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Bradley Benavides, 56, and Nikki Floris, 46, both face a single criminal count of making false statements. The pair held senior leadership roles on the FBI’s now-defunct Foreign Influence Task Force. Both turned themselves in to authorities and made an initial appearance in a Washington, D.C., federal court on Friday morning.
The criminal complaints mark the latest politically sensitive prosecution brought by the Justice Department under President Trump’s second administration. Prosecutors allege that Benavides and Floris possessed real-time knowledge of the inquiries involving former President Joe Biden’s son, but misled the House Judiciary Committee during interviews in 2023.
Contested Testimony and Legal Pushback
According to charging documents, the false statements hindered congressional oversight by allowing both officials to escape further questioning. In a social media post on X, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., stated that the defendants lied about their roles, noting that one official claimed to have learned about the matter from Wikipedia despite evidence showing their involvement in shaping the public narrative surrounding the laptop right before the 2020 election.
Because prosecutors charged the former officials via a criminal complaint rather than a grand jury indictment, a grand jury hasn’t yet formally indicted the pair. During Friday’s hearing, Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui described the defendants as longtime public servants with “sparkling backgrounds” in law enforcement, observing that charging them by complaint for conduct that’s “quite old” is unusual.
Defense attorneys for Floris forcefully rejected the allegations, describing her as a patriot who served 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. It’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election,” her legal team said in a statement.
A Long-Running Political Conflict
The controversy dates back to 2019, when a computer device was reportedly abandoned at a Delaware repair shop before being obtained by Rudy Giuliani, a personal attorney for President Trump. Weeks before the 2020 election, The New York Post published reports alleging the laptop contained evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden. While portions of the data were later confirmed to belong to Hunter Biden, no evidence has ever emerged demonstrating that Joe Biden benefited financially from his son’s foreign business affairs.
Hunter Biden later faced federal charges, resulting in a conviction on gun offenses and a guilty plea to separate tax crimes. Former President Joe Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon for his son in December 2024.
Benavides and Floris are scheduled to return to court for a preliminary hearing on Tuesday.