WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal judge dismissed Monday a criminal complaint against two former FBI officials accused of lying to Congress about Hunter Biden, citing what he called the “weaponization” of President Donald Trump’s Justice Department just before the midterm elections.
In a scathing hour-long ruling read in court, U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said the investigation that resulted in the charges against Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides was rushed, conducted at the behest of Trump and FBI Director Kash Patel, and marred by “critical errors” that necessitated the dismissal of the case.
“I am deeply troubled by what happened here in this case,” Faruqui said. “What happened here cannot be described as anything other than militarization. »
The ruling may not put a definitive end to the case, as the Justice Department still has the option to pursue an indictment, even if he struggled under the Trump administration to persuade grand juries in the nation’s capital to return indictments in politically charged prosecutions like this one. Meanwhile, it is nonetheless a resounding rebuke of a department that the judge said could have sought an indictment at any time, but instead chose, for transparent political reasons, to file a criminal complaint on the eve of trial. Tuesday’s midterm vote.
“I’m not going to bury my head in the sand and pretend I don’t know how to read a calendar,” Faruqui said, referring to the proximity of the accusations to the elections, which will determine control of Congress for the final two years of the Republican president’s second term.
Prosecutors had accused the two former FBI officials of falsely downplaying to Congress their knowledge of investigations into President Joe Biden’s son and of a laptop the younger Biden dropped off at a computer repair shop in Delaware in 2019. But Faruqui said the Justice Department failed to establish in its complaint that statements made during 2023 testimony were intentionally false and affected lawmakers’ investigation into Hunter Biden or that the former officials had a motive to deceive.
“Without cause, without direct evidence, I have nothing” to pursue, Faruqui said to establish the probable cause necessary to confirm the complaint.
Floris’ lawyers, who after the ruling embraced his supporters outside the courtroom, said “the so-called lawsuits were nothing more than a politically motivated smear campaign aimed at scoring political points ahead of the midterm elections.”
“The charges brought under the clearly discredited authority of the Department of Justice should never have been brought in the first place,” the lawyers said in a statement.
Judge identified political motive and “critical errors”
Dismissal followed a three-day dramatic hearing Last week, an FBI agent investigating the case admitted that the investigation had been viewed in his office as a sort of “witch hunt” and that he himself had considered it a “huge distraction” from his regular work.
The agent, Bryan Witt, said the investigation was opened a day later a prime-time speech on election security by Trump in which he rehashed long-standing grievances regarding his 2020 loss to Joe Biden, a Democrat. He said the investigation was assigned to his office in Kansas City, Mo., and that Patel, a close Trump ally, was demanding and receiving constant updates — something Witt called unusual.
Recalling the pressure Witt said he was operating on, Faruqui blamed the Trump administration for a rushed investigation that undermined the results.
“The rush to load led to critical errors,” he said. Among the errors cited by the magistrate was that the complaint said the two officials testified under oath before the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee when they were not under oath.
The judge’s concerns about the case emerged almost immediately, when he raised questions about why the Justice Department had charged the case through a criminal complaint — which is typically done when investigators have an urgent need to take a defendant into custody — as opposed to an indictment that requires approval from a grand jury.
“It stands to reason that the U.S. Attorney’s Office is avoiding taking this case to a grand jury,” Faruqui said.
Last week, the Justice Department failed to obtain a grand jury indictment against Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House staffer who provided dramatic but controversial information. testimony against Trump before a House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the United States Capitol.
Then, at a preliminary hearing Last week, Faruqui criticized the Justice Department for overnight filing an amended complaint with an additional criminal charge directly on the docket instead of first approving the new charge with the court — something he said he’s never seen before.
Case involves years-old issues over laptop
The case centers on a laptop that the Justice Department says Hunter Biden abandoned at a Wilmington, Delaware, computer repair shop in 2019. The existence of the laptop was publicly revealed in October 2020 with a New York Post article reporting some of the laptop’s contents.
Floris and Benavides were leaders of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, or FITF, created to monitor other countries’ efforts to interfere in U.S. politics but which was disbanded last year by the Trump administration after years of Republican criticism.
The Justice Department accused them of falsely downplaying their knowledge of the laptop when they appeared before the House Judiciary Committee as it conducted its own investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings.
A prosecutor argued last week that the former officials may have been motivated to downplay their knowledge of the laptop because Joe Biden was president at the time they were questioned and to distance themselves from the fact that the FITF had not publicly corrected the account by some Democrats and former intelligence officials that the laptop may have been linked to Russian disinformation. Then Trump’s intelligence director, John Ratcliffesaid after the laptop was released that there was no sign of foreign involvement.
Defense lawyers disputed this characterization. Faruqui said prosecutors have not identified a plausible motive for why the former officials might have intentionally made false statements.
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