Donald Trump’s administration has accused two former FBI officials of lying to Congress about the bureau’s involvement with investigations into Hunter Biden, accusations that lawyers are calling “nonsense.”
Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, two former top intelligence specialists, are charged with one count each of making false statements to Congress. They made their first appearance in front of Washington, D.C. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui on Friday morning.
The charges, announced by FBI Director Kash Patel, follow a months-long campaign from the president and his allies who have alleged a so-called “deep state” plot to suppress allegations of corruption involving former President Joe Biden and his family.
“Nikki Floris is a patriot. She served our nation as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years,” lawyers for Floris said in a statement shared with The Independent on Friday.
“Yet today, the DOJ has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts,” they added. “It’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election.”
The government’s reasoning for bringing the case now is “as transparent as they are unjust: to push a false narrative for a shot at political points,” her lawyers added.
The charges — a rare case from the Department of Justice against former employees — stem from an investigation into the now-defunct FBI Foreign Influence Task Force, which sought to prevent foreign actors from unlawfully influencing 2020 elections. Floris had previously faced scrutiny from Republican members of Congress and other Trump allies over recently declassified emails in which she discussed her intelligence work.
Floris and Benavides had testified that the unit was not involved with investigations into Hunter Biden, but “documentary evidence, contemporaneous communications, and witness accounts contradict their testimony,” according to Patel.
According to the Justice Department’s court filings, “Hunter Biden was a recurring subject” at the unit’s briefings and in “emails, instant messages, and meetings, including internal discussion of whether information about him was Russian disinformation.”
“Lying to Congress by senior FBI officials strikes at the heart of our system. No one is above the law,” Patel said.
The contents of the laptop were published by The New York Post in the days before Election Day in 2020 allegedly contained emails that appeared to show Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.
The circumstances of their release — and possession by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who was looking for dirt on the Biden family — had raised concerns among Democrats and former intelligence officials about the possibility of a Russian disinformation effort injected into the presidential election’s final days as concerns within the first Trump administration’s own intelligence community was assessing similar threats.
Hunter Biden was ultimately investigated, charged and convicted of gun and tax crimes before his father pardoned him before leaving office.
The charges, brought within less than two weeks before Election Day, follow years-long allegations among Trump and his allies, Republican members of Congress and right-wing outlets that the Biden administration and federal law enforcement officials had slow-walked investigations into the former president’s son to derail Trump’s election in 2020.
A Department of Justice special counsel investigated the claims and did not recommend any additional charges against Hunter. A separate government informant, however, was later charged by special counsel David Weiss for providing false information alleging bribery in the Biden family.
Floris and Benavides will not be detained before trial. The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Tuesday, October 27.
The case was brought through a criminal complaint, not a federal grand jury; grand juries in the nation’s capital have largely been skeptical of bringing charges in politically charged cases during the second Trump term.