2 ex-FBI officials charged with lying to Congress about Hunter Biden laptop probe - CBS News

Washington — Two former senior FBI officials are facing criminal charges for allegedly making false statements to Congress during testimony in 2023 about the bureau's investigation involving Hunter Biden's laptop.

Nikki Floris, 46, a former intelligence analyst in charge in the bureau's Washington Field Office, and Bradley Benavides, 56, the former deputy assistant director at the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, each appeared in court on Friday in Washington, D.C., where they were presented with a copy of a criminal complaint charging them with one count each of lying to Congress about their roles on the Foreign Influence Task Force during the 2020 election, specifically the FBI's Hunter Biden investigations.

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 Benavides allegedly did the same that September. Their alleged false statements pertained to "their awareness of involvement in the FBI's investigations into Hunter Biden," it said.

"The evidence further establishes probable cause to believe that Floris and Benavides made these statements for the purpose of concealing [the Foreign Influence Task Force's] engagement with and communications about the Hunter Biden investigations and impeding the congressional investigation," it said.

The decision by the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. to charge the pair 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 raised questions about the decision.

"The alleged conduct happened years ago. The government has had the information about this for years," said Ron Safer, an attorney for Benavides. 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 review whether there was adequate probable cause that a crime was committed.

The politically charged case was also unsealed just about two weeks before the midterm election — a fact that may raise questions by DOJ veterans about the timing of a case involving testimony to Congress that occurred more than three years ago.

Faruqui said he thought the manner in which the case was charged seemed "strange" and he rejected a request by prosecutors to delay the preliminary hearing for two weeks or more.

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

"This is the Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads," he said. "This will follow them for the rest of their lives."

Former President Joe Biden's son Hunter has long been a target of President Trump and his allies.

Hunter Biden was extensively investigated by the FBI over his business dealings in Ukraine with the energy company Burisma, and the contents of his laptop after he left it at a repair shop in Delaware.

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

He was pardoned by his father shortly before his father left office, and was never charged with wrongdoing in connection with the allegations involving his overseas business dealings.

The criminal complaint unsealed on Friday said an FBI unit chief told investigators in October 2026 that Floris and Benavides both had oversight roles into the various Hunter Biden probes.

The complaint focused on an FBI counterintelligence operation by the Foreign Influence Task Force known as "Round River," which, it said, was focused on collecting "derogatory informant reporting on, among other things, Hunter Biden, to flag the reporting as Russian disinformation."

Floris served as the deputy assistant director of the FITF from mid-2019 through mid-2022, while Benavides served as its section chief from mid-2019 through the 2020 election, it said.

"Witness accounts and contemporaneous documents from December 2019 through September 2021 show that Floris and Benavides knew about and were actively involved in the FBI's investigations of Hunter Biden. FITF hosted classified briefings for the agents and prosecutors on the Hunter Biden case in which Floris and Benavides were active participants," the complaint said.