Judge dismisses charges against former FBI agents accused of lying about Hunter Biden, citing ‘weaponization’

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Monday dismissed a criminal complaint against two former FBI officials accused of making false statements to Congress about Hunter Biden, saying the investigation that led to the charges was rushed, overtly political and marred by “critical errors.”

“What happened here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said in a scathing court ruling that dismissed charges against former officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides.

He noted that the investigation was launched a day after a prime-time speech by President Donald Trump in which he rehashed his grievances over his 2020 election defeat and was commissioned and closely monitored by FBI Director Kash Patel. He also pointed out that the Justice Department could have brought the case, which stems from statements made in 2023, at any time, but chose to do so two weeks ago, in the run-up to 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.

The move followed a dramatic hearing in which he chastised prosecutors for unorthodox maneuvers and an FBI agent who worked on the case said he feared the investigation would be seen as “political.”

The Justice Department may still have an opportunity to pursue the grand jury indictment against the two former officials, whose lawyers had insisted the charges be dismissed. But the judge’s decision nevertheless represents a clear setback for the Justice Department, particularly given the difficulty it has had persuading grand juries in the nation’s capital to return indictments in politically charged prosecutions like this one.

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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.

Then, at a preliminary hearing last week, he 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 had never seen before.

The hearing also featured testimony from an FBI agent who worked on the case, who said the investigation was launched just after Trump gave a speech on election security last July and was commissioned by FBI Director Kash Patel, who closely monitored it.

The case accused the two former FBI officials of misleading Congress in 2023 about their involvement and knowledge of efforts to investigate a laptop that the Justice Department said was dropped by Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019.

But it also sought to echo long-standing grievances from Trump and his Republican allies that the FBI tried to suppress information during the 2020 presidential campaign that was seen as potentially harmful to the Biden family. Democratic candidate Joe Biden ultimately defeated Trump, the Republican incumbent, in the 2020 election.

The Justice Department case highlights, for example, how Floris and Benavides gave lawmakers in 2020 a “defensive briefing” that Republican Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said was used to undermine their investigation into the Biden administration and link it to Russian disinformation.