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Ex-FBI Officials Charged for Lying to Congress About Hunter Biden Laptop
Confirmed
In Short: Two former FBI employees were charged with lying to Congress about their involvement in the Hunter Biden laptop investigation.
Two former FBI officials, Bradley Benavides and Nikki Floris, were charged with making false statements to Congress regarding their roles in the FBI's Hunter Biden laptop investigation.
According to the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro, the two allegedly lied about their involvement, with one claiming to have learned about it from Wikipedia despite evidence showing their involvement in shaping the public narrative about the laptop.
Benavides and Floris each face a single criminal count stemming from testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in 2023.
During the July 19, 2023, interview, Floris testified that she had no involvement in the Hunter Biden investigation, while Benavides stated he had no knowledge of any investigation into the laptop during his tenure at the FBI.
The Justice Department's complaint alleges that both officials concealed their relationships with federal investigators and prosecutors close to the Hunter Biden probes while serving on the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF).
The case has been seen as politically charged, with Republicans launching an impeachment inquiry into President Biden over Hunter Biden's business dealings during his father's vice presidency.
The FBI boss stated that both officials testified that the FITF was not involved in the Hunter Biden investigations, contradicting documentary evidence, contemporaneous communications, and witness accounts.
FBI Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui noted that charging officials for conduct that is 'quite old' is unusual, and set a preliminary hearing for the following Tuesday.
Floris' attorneys called her 'a patriot' and said she has 'served our nation as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years,' while Benavides' attorneys noted the timing of the charges, just days before the midterm elections.
The case underscores longstanding congressional Republican complaints about the FBI’s handling of the laptop, including allegations that the bureau was not forthcoming about its conclusion that the materials on it were authentic.
The revelation of the laptop's existence in October 2020 injected a thorny storyline into the 2020 presidential race between Trump and Joe Biden, who went on to win the election.
Lying to Congress by senior FBI officials strikes at the heart of our system, according to U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro, emphasizing that no one is above the law.
What this adds
The pardon of Hunter Biden by President Joe Biden in December 2024 adds context to the ongoing political tensions surrounding the case.
What's confirmed
- In a statement on X, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro, said Floris and Benavides "allegedly lied to Congress about their roles in the FBI's Hunter Biden investigations, with one claiming they only learned about it from Wikipedia — despite evidence showing their involvement in helping shape the public narrative about Hunter Biden's laptop right before the election."
What's still developing
- The laptop of Hunter Biden, former President Joe Biden's son, was the subject of intense scrutiny after The New York Post reported weeks before the 2020 presidential election that the device was abandoned at a Delaware repair shop in 2019, and then obtained by President Trump's former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
- President Joe Biden signed a full and unconditional pardon for his son in December 2024, shortly before leaving the White House.
- Some of the data on the laptop was later ascertained to belong to Hunter Biden.
- Hunter Biden was convicted of federal gun charges and later pleaded guilty to separate tax offenses.
- The Post reported Hunter Biden's laptop showed wrongdoing by then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who subsequently won the election.
- “I can see from the perspective of anyone consuming this story that they could be concerned this is a Russia disinformation effort similar to what the FBI, ODNI, and other agencies have warned against; however, the FBI has not made that determination in this specific instance and as I stated before, I won’t comment on investigations or investigative actions,” wrote Benavides in an Oct. 16 email that year on an email chain that included Floris.
- The two-way information sharing was additionally laid bare in “briefings, emails, instant messages, and meetings” recounted in the affidavit filed in DC federal court.
- “These are the most senior figures to date who are being charged in the lawfare schemes against Trump, aside from James Comey,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told The Post.
- Both Floris and Benavides even “assisted with the FBI’s response to press inquiries” in the days after The Post’s bombshell Oct.
- Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui remarked that it is “rare that we have charges this old coming in this nature.” Faruqui set a preliminary hearing for next Tuesday over the objections of prosecutors, who pushed for more time given what the judge described as the “sword of Damocles” hanging over the defendants’ head.
- “Yet today, the DOJ has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts,” her attorneys said in a statement.
- The curious circumstances of the laptop’s discovery raised concerns among Democrats and former intelligence officials about the possibility of Russian disinformation, particularly at a time when the Trump administration’s own intelligence community was assessing that Russia was attempting to interfere on Trump’s behalf in the election and as Giuliani had traveled abroad looking for dirt on the Bidens.