Attorneys for a former FBI agent charged with lying to Congress about the probe into Hunter Biden’s laptop computer called the charges “a serious abuse of the criminal charging process” Tuesday.
The Justice Department on Friday charged two former senior FBI officials for allegedly making false statements to Congress, stemming from a probe into whether investigators in the lead-up to the 2020 election sought to suppress or discredit the veracity of material on the laptop of former President Joe Biden’s son that included embarrassing photos and videos.
Nikki Floris, the former deputy assistant director for FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, and Bradley Benavides, another former senior counterintelligence official, both appeared Friday in a federal district court in D.C., where they were charged through a criminal complaint with making false statements to Congress.
The DOJ then added an obstruction of a congressional proceeding charge against two former FBI officials prior to a hearing on the matter on Tuesday. Both former agents deny all charges.
“The government’s last-ditch filing before the pre-scheduled preliminary hearing in this case is not merely procedurally improper and substantively deficient,” Floris’ attorneys said. “It represents a serious abuse of the criminal charging process, a troubling disregard for the judicial safeguards governing the initiation of criminal proceedings, and a calculated effort to evade judicial scrutiny and shield the government’s allegations from adversarial testing at the scheduled preliminary hearing.”
Court records filed on Tuesday added the obstruction charge and described how the charges are based on witness accounts and other documents of the alleged conduct dating as far back as 2020.
The Justice Department alleges that the pair knowingly lied to Congress on two separate occasions — on July 19, 2023, for Floris, and on Sept. 28, 2023, for Benavides.
Deputy Assistant Director for Counterterrorism at the FBI Nikki Floris, testifies before the House Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 22, 2019.
Susan Walsh/AP Photo
“The evidence further establishes that probable cause exists to believe that Floris and Benavides made these statements for the purpose of minimizing or concealing [the FBI Foreign Influence Task Force’s] engagement with, and communications about, the Hunter Biden investigations and to impede the Congressional investigation,” according to the documents filed overnight.
The affidavit alleges that both congressional and FBI witnesses, along with FBI documents, prove that the pair were aware of the Hunter Biden investigation.
“What is going on at the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office?” attorneys for Floris said in a statement responding to the filing. “In the middle of the night, the government filed an unsigned and unsworn complaint attempting to fix the issues with their original charge against Ms. Floris and adding a new charge just as meritless as the first one.”
“In our combined decades of DOJ service, we have never seen or even heard of something like this being filed. That’s because the public lodging of criminal charges must be authorized by the grand jury, a judge, or the defendant herself,” the statement said. “We have asked to address this outrageous government conduct against a decorated public servant at today’s court hearing.”
U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui appeared on Friday to be skeptical of the charges — and said the “facts appear to be old” and there are “questions that need to be answered.” The judge set a hearing for Tuesday to consider whether the government established probable cause in its complaint.
Faruqui said the judge who signed off on the complaint needed extra time to determine if there was probable cause or not. “Rare charges” that are “this old” are never charged by complaint, according to the judge.
It was not immediately clear why prosecutors chose to charge the pair through a criminal complaint and not an indictment, which would have required approval by a grand jury instead of a magistrate judge.
Ron Safer, a lawyer for Benavides said the government should be able to offer evidence “today” against two “dedicated public servants.”
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