Two former FBI officials were charged Friday with lying to Congress about their role in investigating Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 presidential election. Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, former top leaders of the now-disbanded Foreign Influence Task Force, surrendered to authorities and made their first appearance in federal court in Washington.
The complaint alleges that in their roles leading the task force, both Floris and Benavides were directly involved in investigations touching Hunter Biden, and that Biden was a recurring subject at task force meetings. Despite that, the complaint says, both downplayed their knowledge and involvement when they testified before Congress in 2023. Benavides is accused of telling lawmakers, with a straight face, that he learned the FBI even had the laptop through Wikipedia. Wikipedia. That’s the story he went with.
FBI Director Kash Patel did not mince words. Lying to Congress by senior FBI officials strikes at the heart of our system,” Patel said. “No one is above the law.” That includes, apparently, the people who used to be in charge of deciding what counted as a foreign influence operation and what didn’t. Hunter Biden laptop FBI inquiry
The case was filed just 10 days before the November 3 elections using a criminal complaint, bypassing a grand jury entirely. U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui noted it is “rare that we have charges this old coming in this nature.” The judge set a preliminary hearing for next Tuesday over prosecutors’ objections, describing the situation as a “sword of Damocles” hanging over the defendants.
Floris’ attorneys called her “a patriot” who has “served our nation as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years.” They blasted the charges as false, saying the DOJ accused her of a crime “on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts.” They also complained that the charges were filed “on the eve of an election.” Irony, meet your new friends: the people who helped bury a major story right before the 2020 election are now upset about election timing.
Just to recap what they allegedly buried: Hunter Biden’s laptop, which contained emails documenting his foreign business dealings, was authenticated by the FBI. The bureau concluded the materials were real, not Russian disinformation, a conclusion backed by then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. But for weeks before the 2020 election, dozens of former intelligence officials signed a letter suggesting it bore the hallmarks of a Russian “information campaign.” Hunter was later convicted of gun and tax offenses. Joe Biden pardoned him on the way out the door.
The Foreign Influence Task Force itself was disbanded in February 2025 by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi in one of her first moves on the job. It had become a magnet for congressional criticism over how it handled, or didn’t handle, the Biden laptop situation. Now two of its former leaders are in federal court explaining their Wikipedia habits.
A preliminary hearing is set for next Tuesday. If the Justice Department wants an indictment, they’ll have to convince a Washington grand jury, which, as the article notes, has not exactly been a rubber stamp for high-profile DOJ cases. Stay tuned, because the party that spent years screaming about election interference is about to get a very long look in the mirror.
