Two Former FBI Officials Charged With Lying to Congress Over Hunter Biden Laptop Probe

Two former FBI officials have been charged with making false statements to Congress about the bureau's handling of investigations tied to Hunter Biden, the son of former US president Joe Biden, according to a report by the Washington Post.

The Justice Department announced the charges on Friday against Nikki Floris, a former analyst who led the intelligence division in the FBI's Washington field office, and Bradley Benavides, a former deputy assistant director for counterintelligence. Prosecutors allege that both intentionally concealed information while testifying before the House Judiciary Committee in 2023 about FBI probes involving Hunter Biden and his laptop. If convicted, each faces up to five years in prison. After a brief appearance before a federal magistrate judge, they were released on Friday morning.

US Attorney Jeanine Pirro, whose office is handling the prosecution, said in a statement that the pair undermined "the very institutions they swore to uphold." She added that lying to Congress strikes at the heart of the democratic system, and that when senior FBI agents do so believing they are above the law, "it's time to bring the hammer of justice down on them."

An FBI affidavit says Floris repeatedly denied any involvement in the Hunter Biden investigations during her testimony. In reality, the document says, she was in frequent communication with the case team for over a year, both sending and receiving information about him. It also says she testified that she knew nothing about the laptop, when she had coordinated the FBI's response to news articles about it in real time.

Benavides testified a few months later and told the same committee he knew little about the matter, saying he had learned about the laptop from a Wikipedia entry while preparing his testimony. The affidavit says he was actually in constant communication about the laptop over a period of days. A committee member said the answers significantly influenced its investigation, including by thwarting follow-up interviews and subpoenas.

Lawyers for Floris rejected the allegations. They said the Justice Department had accused her falsely "on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts," and called her a patriot who served as an FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years. They said it was no coincidence that the government filed "these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election." Ron Safer, attorney for Benavides, urged the court to hold a hearing on whether prosecutors had enough evidence against "two lifetime public servants."

US Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui raised concerns about the timing of the charges and asked whether the alleged false statements had a material impact on the investigation. He granted the defense request for a hearing to weigh the government's evidence, set for Tuesday, which is sooner than would typically be expected for defendants who have been sent home. "It's certainly rare," he said, "But it is more rare that we have charges that are this old of this nature."

Faruqui noted that the information appeared quite old, as charges came more than three years after the testimony. He said both defendants had "sparkling backgrounds" in law enforcement and an interest in clearing their names quickly. "There is a Sword of Damocles hanging over their head," he said, adding that the matter would follow them for the rest of their lives.

The laptop at the center of the case has long been a partisan flashpoint. Republicans say it holds evidence of corruption in the Biden family, while Democrats describe it as part of a Republican conspiracy. It was handed to the FBI in 2019 after a computer shop owner said Hunter Biden had dropped it off and never returned to collect it. The owner told the Washington Post he turned it over to authorities after viewing some of its contents.

The case comes as many FBI agents whom allies of President Donald Trump accused of working against him have been pushed out of the bureau since the start of his second term. Some of them say they were dismissed only because they worked on investigations involving Trump, while others say they were fired for not showing him enough loyalty.