WASHINGTON -- Two former FBI intelligence officials who specialized in foreign election interference were charged on Friday with making false statements to U.S. Congress about their roles in investigating Hunter Biden’s laptop in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides surrendered Friday and made their first appearance in federal court in Washington, where their lawyers pressed for a speedy hearing at which they could contest the allegations against them. The U.S. Department of Justice says Floris and Benavides lied to Congress in 2023 about the involvement of a specialized foreign-influence task force in investigations into Biden as well as their knowledge of the laptop. Floris’ attorneys called her “a patriot” and said she has “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,” her attorneys said in a statement. “It’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election.” The case was filed 10 days before the Nov. 3 elections and marks the latest in a series of splashy and politically charged investigative actions the Department of Justice has undertaken in the run-up to the midterm contests. The prosecution, a rare Department of Justice criminal case against a former employee, revisits a tangled and peculiar saga that roiled the final weeks of the 2020 race. It also comes amid a broader, backward-looking effort by FBI Director Kash Patel, who before taking over the nation’s premier law enforcement agency was a harsh critic of it, to scrutinize high-profile episodes from the bureau’s recent past that for years have animated President Donald Trump’s conservative base. “Lying to Congress by senior FBI officials strikes at the heart of our system. No one is above the law,” Patel said in a statement posted on X. The revelation of the laptop’s existence in October 2020 injected a thorny storyline in the race between Trump, the Republican incumbent, and Hunter Biden’s father, Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic challenger, who went on to win the race. The laptop’s contents were publicized by the New York Post, which said it had obtained from Trump ally Rudy Giuliani a hard drive of a computer dropped off by Hunter Biden at a Wilmington, Delaware, repair shop. The laptop contained emails that appeared to show discussions of the younger Biden’s foreign business dealings. The peculiar circumstances of the laptop’s discovery raised concerns among Democrats and former intelligence officials about the possibility of Russian disinformation, particularly 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. Hunter Biden was subsequently charged with, and convicted of, gun and tax offenses during his father’s administration. Joe Biden pardoned him in his final weeks in office. The Justice Department historically looks to avoid public and overt investigative acts in the direct lead-up to an election that involve candidates or that risk influencing an outcome. But officials in the last two weeks have made a series of bold moves in cases with political undertones, including a search of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s house in an immigration fraud investigation and a corruption indictment unsealed Thursday against powerful Democratic Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas. Floris and Benavides, two experienced intelligence officials, led the FBI’s since-disbanded Foreign Intelligence Task Force, or FITF, when the laptop was discovered. They are accused by the Justice Department of making false statements in Congress in 2023 by saying that the FITF was not involved in investigations related to Hunter Biden when contemporaneous messages proved otherwise, according to a criminal complaint filed against them. The case brings renewed attention to the work of the task force, which was established in the first Trump administration to police influence campaigns staged by Russia and other nations aimed at sowing discord, undermining democracy and spreading disinformation. The task force became a magnet of congressional Republican criticism during the Biden investigation and was disbanded in February 2025 by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi in one of her first acts on the job. Eric Tucker And Alanna Durkin Richer, The Associated Press
