Ex-FBI Task Force Leaders Accused of Misleading House Panel on Hunter Biden Work

Federal prosecutors in Washington on Friday accused two retired senior FBI officials of lying to House investigators about what they knew of the bureau's inquiries into Hunter Biden, whose father is former President Joe Biden.

Nikki Cole Floris and Bradley Benavides each gave themselves up after warrants were issued for their arrest. Floris, 46, lives in Alexandria, Virginia, and Benavides, 56, is from Aiken, South Carolina, according to federal prosecutors in the District of Columbia. A criminal complaint charges each with a single count of making a false statement in a matter under the authority of the legislative branch, a felony under section 1001 of the federal criminal code.

Both were leaders of the bureau's Foreign Influence Task Force, a unit the FBI created to guard U.S. elections against meddling from abroad and has since shut down. According to prosecutors, Floris ran the group as a deputy assistant director starting in mid-2019 and stayed until mid-2022. Benavides, a section chief in the same unit, held that job from mid-2019 until the 2020 vote.

The case centers on closed-door interviews the House Judiciary Committee held in 2023, when the panel was examining the task force's part in the Hunter Biden matters. Floris sat for her session on July 19 of that year, and Benavides for his on Sept. 28, a sworn statement of facts filed with the complaint says. Each had been told beforehand that a false answer to Congress could be prosecuted.

In the transcript excerpts the government quotes, investigators asked Floris whether she had played any role in the Hunter Biden case. "I did not," she replied. When Benavides was asked how he had learned of a criminal probe tied to the laptop, he answered, "The Wikipedia page."

Prosecutors say the record tells a different story. Floris, they allege, talked about the bureau's Hunter Biden cases regularly for more than a year, inside the task force and with colleagues elsewhere in the FBI. Benavides, they say, often discussed the laptop with bureau officials in the months before the 2020 election. The affidavit also asserts that the task force put on classified briefings about the case for agents and prosecutors, and that both defendants took an active part.

"Lying to Congress by anyone strikes at the heart of our democratic system," said Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, adding that "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."

Attorney General Todd Blanche said public servants "cannot lie to Congress and get away with it." Kash Patel, the FBI director, said the arrests grew out of a continuing investigation of the disbanded task force and claimed that one of the two had privately described "running a shadow government" during the 2020 race. The government's announcement did not say which defendant he meant.

The office noted that a complaint contains only allegations and that the two are presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

At their first court appearance, Zia Faruqui, the federal magistrate judge handling the case, turned down the government's bid for more time and set a preliminary hearing for Tuesday, where prosecutors will have to show probable cause. He said the charges hung over the pair like a "sword of Damocles."

Lawyers for Floris pushed back hard in a written statement. They said she had worked for the FBI as an intelligence officer for close to two decades and was being falsely accused "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," they said.

Voters go to the polls for the midterms on Nov. 3, less than two weeks after the charges were filed.