Two former FBI officials charged with lying to Congress about Hunter Biden’s laptop have urged a federal judge in Washington to throw out the case, calling it a political prosecution, after a week in which the judge openly criticised how prosecutors were handling it.
Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, who both helped run the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, are accused of making false statements to the House Judiciary Committee in 2023. Both deny wrongdoing and are presumed innocent.
What the pair are charged with
According to the Associated Press, the criminal complaint alleges that the two officials played down what they knew about the laptop when questioned by congressional investigators, even though they had taken part in numerous internal discussions about it. The laptop, reportedly left at a repair shop in Delaware in 2019, became public through a New York Post story in 2020, weeks before that year’s presidential election, PBS NewsHour reported.
Unusually, the case was brought by criminal complaint rather than through a grand jury indictment, and it was filed more than a week before next Tuesday’s US midterm elections.
The courtroom revelation about Kash Patel
At Thursday’s hearing before US Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui, FBI agent Bryan Witt gave evidence that FBI Director Kash Patel ordered the investigation, took an unusual interest in it and asked for regular updates, the AP reported. Mr Witt told the court the work had been a major distraction from his other duties.
He also told the court that the investigation into Ms Floris was directed after a primetime speech in July by President Donald Trump about his 2020 election defeat, according to the AP.
Ms Floris’s lawyer, Mary Dohrmann, argued that the case was built to please the president. She told the court a political prosecution made for a “shaky foundation for a criminal case”. Ron Safer, representing Mr Benavides, argued there was no proof his client knowingly lied, and said the task force never assessed whether the laptop was authentic in the first place.
Prosecutor James Kirkpatrick countered that the officials had a motive to minimise what they knew because Hunter Biden’s father, Joe Biden, was president at the time. He argued that the task force had failed to correct a public narrative that the laptop was Russian disinformation.
A judge already unimpressed
The hearing came two days after a tense session on Tuesday, when Judge Faruqui took prosecutors to task over an amended complaint filed only hours earlier that added an obstruction charge. The judge objected that the document had not been signed by a judge, who must approve a finding of probable cause, and said it was not the court’s practice to place unsigned complaints on the docket, PBS NewsHour reported.
Defence lawyers asked for the amended complaint to be struck out. In a filing reported by PBS, Ms Floris’s legal team openly questioned what was happening inside the US Attorney’s Office in Washington.
The task force the pair led was disbanded by the Justice Department in February 2025.
What happens next
Judge Faruqui did not rule on Thursday and a decision on the request to dismiss is expected next week, according to the AP. Even if the complaint is thrown out, prosecutors could still try to obtain an indictment from a grand jury, though the AP noted that grand juries in Washington have repeatedly refused to approve charges in politically sensitive cases this year.
The case is one of several in which Trump administration prosecutors have pursued current and former critics or officials linked to past investigations of the president, including former FBI director James Comey. The administration says it is holding officials to account; defence lawyers say the cases are driven by politics. A ruling next week will show which argument has more traction with this judge.
Sources
- Associated Press (via WSLS): Ex-FBI officials accused of false statements about Hunter Biden press for dismissal of charges (29 October 2026)
- PBS NewsHour: Judge scolds DOJ over case against ex-FBI officials accused of false statements about Hunter Biden’s laptop (27 October 2026)
- Just Security: Early Edition, October 30, 2026 (30 October 2026)
Featured image: FBI Headquarters – J. Edgar Hoover Building (53840035941).jpg by ajay_suresh, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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