Washington — Two former high-ranking FBI officials have been charged with allegedly providing false information to Congress during testimony in 2023 concerning the bureau’s investigation connected to Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Nikki Floris, 46, who previously served as an intelligence analyst in charge at the FBI’s Washington Field Office, and Bradley Benavides, 56, a former deputy assistant director in the agency’s Counterintelligence Division, appeared before a federal court in Washington, D.C., on Friday. Each was given a criminal complaint accusing them of making false statements to Congress about their involvement with the Foreign Influence Task Force during the 2020 presidential election, particularly in relation to FBI investigations concerning Hunter Biden.
An FBI statement of facts submitted alongside the criminal complaint claims that Floris provided misleading testimony to Congress on July 19, 2023, while Benavides allegedly made similar statements in September of that year. The disputed testimony concerned “their awareness of involvement in the FBI’s investigations into Hunter Biden,” according to the filing.
“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,” the document stated.
The decision by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., to pursue charges through a criminal complaint based on allegations dating back three years represents an unusual prosecutorial approach. Attorneys representing both defendants, along with the magistrate judge overseeing Friday’s proceedings and the unsealing of the complaint, questioned how the case had been brought.
“The alleged conduct happened years ago. The government has had the information about this for years,” said Ron Safer, who represents Benavides. Addressing Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui during the proceedings at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Safer requested that a preliminary hearing be arranged “as soon as humanly possible” to determine whether sufficient probable cause existed to support the allegations.
The politically sensitive proceedings were made public approximately two weeks ahead of the midterm elections. That timing could prompt scrutiny from former Justice Department officials, given that the case concerns congressional testimony delivered more than three years earlier.
Faruqui described the prosecution’s decision to bring the allegations in this manner as “strange” and declined the government’s request to postpone the preliminary hearing by at least two weeks.
Instead, the judge directed both sides to appear again on Tuesday at 11 a.m.
“This is the Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads,” Faruqui said. “This will follow them for the rest of their lives.”
Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, has been a frequent subject of criticism and scrutiny from President Trump and his political supporters.
The FBI conducted extensive investigations into Hunter Biden’s overseas business activities, including his association with Ukrainian energy company Burisma, as well as information recovered from a laptop he had left at a computer repair business in Delaware.
Former Attorney General Merrick Garland subsequently designated a special counsel to oversee the investigations. Hunter Biden was prosecuted and found guilty of three felony firearms offenses. In a separate criminal proceeding, he admitted guilt to three felony tax violations and six misdemeanor tax offenses.
Before leaving office, Joe Biden granted his son a presidential pardon. Hunter Biden had not been criminally charged over allegations concerning his international business activities.
The charges
According to the criminal complaint released Friday, an FBI unit chief informed investigators in October 2026 that both Floris and Benavides had exercised supervisory responsibilities in various investigations involving Hunter Biden.
The allegations center on an FBI counterintelligence initiative conducted by the Foreign Influence Task Force, identified as “Round River.” The complaint describes the operation as an effort focused on gathering “derogatory informant reporting on, among other things, Hunter Biden, to flag the reporting as Russian disinformation.”
The filing states that Floris held the position of deputy assistant director of the Foreign Influence Task Force from the middle of 2019 until mid-2022. Benavides, meanwhile, served as the task force’s section chief beginning in mid-2019 and continuing through the 2020 election.
“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 stated.
Prosecutors allege that Floris subsequently misrepresented both her participation in the Hunter Biden investigation and the activities of the Foreign Influence Task Force when she appeared before the House Judiciary Committee in July 2023.
The complaint highlights an exchange in which investigators asked Floris, “Did you have any involvement in the Hunter Biden investigation?” She answered, “I did not.”
Another portion of her testimony cited in the filing concerned whether the task force had discussed Hunter Biden. She was asked, “Was there ever a discussion at the FITF about Hunter Biden?”
“No. At least not with me,” Floris replied, before explaining: “And again, there’s a whole team below me, so whether or not conversations happened, I don’t know, but I personally did not have any conversations.”
During Benavides’ September 2023 questioning before the House Judiciary Committee, he reportedly claimed that he had discovered certain details about the Hunter Biden laptop investigation only after consulting Wikipedia while preparing to testify.
According to the complaint, Benavides was asked, “When did you learn that there was an ongoing criminal investigation related to the laptop?”
“The Wikipedia page,” he responded.
When questioned further about whether he had been aware of the investigation during his FBI employment, Benavides allegedly answered, “No.”
The filing also refers to testimony from a congressional staff member who attended both interviews. That individual told investigators that the statements provided by Floris and Benavides appeared to be “materially untrue.”
Separately, an FBI employee later informed investigators that he had personally discussed the laptop with Benavides, including conversations about examining its contents.
“Floris testified that she had no involvement in the Hunter Biden investigations. In reality, she was in frequent communication with the case team for over a year during which she both sent and received information about Hunter Biden,” the complaint stated.
“Benavides’ testimony followed a similar pattern,” the filing continued.
The complaint and its accompanying sworn statement further allege that both officials participated in examining materials used to draft a script for a defensive briefing, a procedure intended to alert individuals who may have been targeted by foreign disinformation activities.
According to the filing, two separate defensive briefings concerning possible Russian disinformation were delivered to Sens. Charles Grassley and Ron Johnson on Aug. 6, 2020. The complaint also alleges that Floris and Benavides helped review and authorize a Round River report examining intelligence gathered from informants in connection with investigations involving Hunter Biden.
In response, Floris’ legal representatives issued a statement denying the allegations and questioning why prosecutors had chosen to pursue the case at this particular time.
“Nikki Floris is a patriot. She served our nation as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years. Yet today, the DOJ has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts. It’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election,” her attorneys said.
“The government’s reasons for charging Nikki are as transparent as they are unjust: to push a false narrative for a shot at political points. It’s another sad day for the DOJ, but we look forward to Nikki’s day in court.”
At Friday’s hearing, James Kirkpatrick, a special assistant U.S. attorney brought in from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri, represented the Justice Department and addressed the court. George Massucco, who heads the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., appeared alongside him.
A representative of Pirro’s office confirmed that Kirkpatrick was working within its criminal division. However, both an internal Justice Department personnel directory and Kirkpatrick’s LinkedIn profile continued to identify his professional location as Kansas City.
During the proceedings, defense attorneys requested that the preliminary hearing take place as early as Monday. Kirkpatrick objected to the proposed schedule, explaining that the case agent was based outside Washington and that he, too, would be traveling out of town.
“You have charged this case,” Faruqui responded. “So you will be spending a lot of time in town.”
Kirkpatrick’s LinkedIn account has subsequently been removed. A spokesperson for Pirro confirmed that two additional prosecutors are involved in the proceedings: Cory Jacobs, deputy chief of the criminal division, and John Borchert, who leads the Fraud, Public Corruption and Civil Rights Section.
The Justice Department has previously assigned prosecutors from outside jurisdictions to participate in politically sensitive criminal proceedings.
Last year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia recruited prosecutors from the Eastern District of North Carolina to assist with its case against former FBI Director James Comey, who faced allegations of providing false testimony to Congress.
The same Virginia office also enlisted an assistant U.S. attorney from the Eastern District of Missouri, whose previous work had largely involved civil litigation, to assist in prosecuting New York Attorney General Letitia James. She had been accused of mortgage-related bank fraud.
In both the Comey and James prosecutions, attorneys from other federal districts were brought into the cases after prosecutors within the office declined to participate because of concerns about the available evidence, according to sources who previously discussed the matter. Both prosecutions were ultimately dismissed after a federal judge determined that the interim U.S. attorney responsible for obtaining the indictments had been appointed unlawfully.