2 former FBI officials accused of lying to Congress about Hunter Biden laptop investigation

Washington — Two former top FBI officials face criminal charges for allegedly making false statements to Congress during their 2023 testimony about the bureau’s investigation involving Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Nikki Floris, 46, a former intelligence analyst in charge of the bureau’s Washington field office, and Bradley Benavides, 56, a former deputy director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, each appeared in court Friday in Washington, D.C., where they received a copy of a criminal complaint charging them each with one count of lying to Congress about their role on the Foreign Influence Task Force during the 2020 election, specifically the investigations of the FBI on Hunter Biden.

A statement of facts prepared by the FBI and filed with the complaint alleges that Floris made false statements to Congress on July 19, 2023, and that Benavides allegedly did the same in September. Their alleged false statements concerned “their awareness of their involvement in the FBI’s investigations into Hunter Biden,” it says.

“The evidence further establishes probable cause to believe that Floris and Benavides made these statements in an effort to conceal (the Foreign Influence Task Force) engagement and communications regarding the Hunter Biden investigations and to obstruct the Congressional investigation,” he said.

The decision by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington to charge the two men in a criminal complaint stemming from three-year-old allegations is highly unusual, and both their defense attorneys and the magistrate judge who presided over Friday’s hearing and unsealing have raised questions about the decision.

“The alleged conduct happened years ago. The government has had information about it for years,” said Ron Safer, Benavides’ attorney. He asked Zia Faruqui, the magistrate judge at Friday’s hearing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, to immediately schedule a preliminary hearing “as soon as humanly possible” to determine whether there is sufficient probable cause that a crime was committed.

The politically charged case also came to light just about two weeks before the midterm elections — a fact that could raise questions from DOJ veterans about the timing of a case involving congressional testimony that occurred more than three years ago.

Faruqui said he found the way the case was charged “strange” and he rejected prosecutors’ request to delay the preliminary hearing for two weeks or more.

He ordered the parties to return at 11 a.m. Tuesday.

“It’s the sword of Damocles that hangs over their heads,” he said. “This will follow them for the rest of their lives.”

Hunter, the son of former President Joe Biden, has long been a target of President Trump and his allies.

Hunter Biden was the subject of an extensive FBI investigation into his business dealings in Ukraine with energy company Burisma and the contents of his laptop after leaving it at a Delaware repair shop.

Former Attorney General Merrick Garland ultimately appointed a special counsel to lead the investigations. Hunter Biden was tried and convicted of three misdemeanor gun charges. He pleaded guilty in a separate criminal case to three tax offenses and six tax offenses.

He was pardoned by his father shortly before his father left office and was never accused of wrongdoing in connection with the allegations regarding his overseas business dealings.

The accusations

The criminal complaint unsealed Friday says an FBI unit chief told investigators in October 2026 that Floris and Benavides both had oversight roles in Hunter Biden’s various investigations.

The complaint focused on an FBI counterintelligence operation conducted by the foreign influence task force known as “Round River,” which it said aimed to gather “derogatory information about, among other things, Hunter Biden, to report that information as Russian disinformation.”

Floris served as deputy deputy director of the FITF from mid-2019 to mid-2022, while Benavides served as its section head from mid-2019 until the 2020 elections, he said.

“Contemporaneous testimony and documents from December 2019 through September 2021 show that Floris and Benavides were aware of and were actively involved in the FBI’s investigations into Hunter Biden. FITF conducted classified briefings for agents and prosecutors on the Hunter Biden case in which Floris and Benavides were active participants,” the complaint states.

When Floris subsequently testified before the House Judiciary Committee in July 2023, the complaint alleged that she lied about her involvement in the Hunter Biden investigation and the role of the Foreign Influence Task Force.

In one exchange cited in the complaint, she was asked, “Were you involved in the Hunter Biden investigation?” to which she responded, “I didn’t,” the complaint states.

In another quoted exchange, he was asked, “Has there ever been a discussion at FITF about Hunter Biden?”

“No, at least not with me,” she replied, adding, “And again, there’s a whole team below me, so whether or not conversations were had, I don’t know, but personally, I haven’t had any conversations.”

During Benavides’ September 2023 interview before the House Judiciary Committee, the complaint said he told investigators he only learned some details of the investigation into Hunter Biden’s laptop on Wikipedia while preparing for the hearing.

“When did you learn there was a criminal investigation into the laptop?” » he says he was asked.

“The Wikipedia page,” he said.

When asked if he had any knowledge of this during his time at the FBI, the complaint alleges, he responded, “No.”

The complaint also named a member of Congress who was present during both interviews. That staffer told investigators that the two officials’ testimonies appeared “substantially false.”

An FBI employee also later told investigators that he personally spoke with Benavides about the laptop and discussed reviewing its contents.

“Floris testified that she had no involvement in the Hunter Biden investigations. In fact, she was in frequent communication with the case team for over a year during which she sent and received information about Hunter Biden,” the complaint states.

“Benavides’ testimony followed a similar pattern,” he adds.

The complaint and accompanying affidavit also allege that Floris and Benavides were involved in reviewing materials intended to help prepare a script for a defensive brief, which is intended to warn someone that he or she may have been the subject of foreign disinformation.

On August 6, 2020, they provided two separate defensive briefings to Senator Charles Grassley and Ron Johnson regarding potential Russian disinformation, it says. He also alleged that Benavides and Floris participated in the review and approval of a Round River report that examined intelligence from informants related to Hunter Biden’s investigations.

Floris’ lawyers said in a statement that she had been falsely accused of a crime and expressed concerns about the timing of the charges.

“Nikki Floris is a patriot. She served our country as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years. Yet today the DOJ wrongly charged her with a crime based on what politicians say, not the facts. It is no coincidence that the government is making these absurd accusations now, years later, on the eve of an election,” they said.

“The government’s reasons for charging Nikki are as transparent as they are unfair: promoting a false narrative to make political points. This is another sad day for the DOJ, but we look forward to Nikki’s day in court.”