Two former senior FBI officials surrendered to federal authorities on Friday to answer a criminal complaint charging them with making false statements to Congress about their work on the bureau's Hunter Biden investigations.1,2,4,7
Nicole "Nikki" Floris, 46, of Alexandria, Virginia, and Bradley Benavides, 56, of Aiken, South Carolina, each face a single count of making false statements to lawmakers. The complaint was filed Oct. 20 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The pair once led the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force, a unit created to shield the 2020 election from foreign meddling that the bureau shut down in February 2025, according to Time.news. The charges were announced by the Justice Department.1,3,8
Prosecutors say Benavides told House investigators he first learned about Hunter Biden's laptop from a Wikipedia entry, which he read while preparing for his 2023 interview, according to the Justice Department. The Daily Caller reported that internal records contradict that account, citing emails the complaint cites showing Benavides traded messages about the device with FBI colleagues in the weeks before the 2020 election. The Daily Caller also said Floris denied that the task force ever discussed the president's son, yet communications referenced in the filing place her in a year's worth of exchanges on the topic. The Guardian and CBS News described the charges as relating to statements made during their 2023 testimony.1,4,8
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced the charges in a Justice Department statement. "Lying to Congress by anyone strikes at the heart of our democratic system but when senior FBI agents lie to Congress believing they are above the law, it's time to bring the hammer of justice down on them," she said.1
Floris's attorneys responded in a statement that condemned the case. "Nikki Floris is a patriot. She served our nation as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years. Yet today, the [justice department] 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 in a statement. The case was filed 10 days before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.6,8,3
At their first appearance in federal court in Washington, U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui said the case pertained to "Hunter Biden's laptop, investigations around that," according to The New Republic. The New Republic described Floris as a former intelligence analyst who ran the intelligence division at the Washington Field Office, and Benavides as a former deputy assistant director for counterintelligence. The Guardian described the proceeding as a first appearance in federal court and said the prosecution is a rare Justice Department criminal case against a former employee.6,8
The laptop first surfaced in October 2020, weeks before that year's presidential election. The New York Post published its contents after receiving a hard drive from Rudy Giuliani, who had obtained it from a Wilmington, Delaware, repair shop where Hunter Biden had left the computer, according to The Guardian. The New Republic reported that the Post later said the contents were mixed with fake material and that most of the data could not be verified. The laptop became a central issue in Republican criticism of Joe Biden during the period that followed.8,6
The case also revisits a separate Hunter Biden-related investigation. The New Republic reported that Alexander Smirnov, the star witness in a congressional probe, admitted to Justice Department prosecutors that "officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved" in fabricating the Hunter Biden narrative. The outlet described the fallout as the collapse of that investigation in 2024. Floris and Benavides had briefed Republican lawmakers in 2020 on the laptop's contents, and Senator Chuck Grassley has claimed the briefing was meant to cast the probe as Russian disinformation, according to the same report.6
FBI Director Kash Patel said in a post that the two were taken into custody Friday, according to The Hill's report on the post. The Guardian said Patel has been scrutinizing high-profile episodes from the bureau's recent past.8,7
The reports do not describe a trial date, a plea or the specific penalties the charge carries. Reports also do not say whether the defendants have entered pleas or whether they intend to contest the complaint in court.1,8
