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Two former senior FBI officials were taken into custody on Friday after being charged with lying to Congress about their roles in investigations into Hunter Biden, top Department of Justice officials announced.
The former officials, 46-year-old Nikki Floris and 56-year-old Bradley Benavides, surrendered on arrest warrants Friday morning, the DOJ said in a press release.
The charges were filed less than two weeks before the midterm election, breaking with longstanding DOJ guidance discouraging actions that could affect upcoming political races.
The announcement also comes amid growing concerns that President Donald Trump — who refused to accept his 2020 election loss and tried repeatedly to overturn those results — is looking for ways to challenge potential Republican midterm losses.
On Thursday, the DOJ filed an unusual lawsuit against Alaska seeking to preemptively challenge the results of that state’s Senate race if incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan narrowly loses.
The charges unveiled Friday morning accuse the two ex-FBI agents of lying in 2023 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee about their agency’s probe of Hunter Biden, the now-56-year-old son of former President Joe Biden.
The agents were “actively involved” in federal investigations of Hunter Biden, which began in 2019 on tax- and money-laundering-related matters, but said otherwise in separate interviews before the House panel, according to an FBI special agent’s affidavit in support of the charges.
“Floris and Benavides allegedly lied to Congress about their roles in the FBI’s Hunter Biden investigations, with one claiming they only learned about it from Wikipedia — despite evidence showing their involvement in helping shape the public narrative about Hunter Biden’s laptop right before the election,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said in an X post.
FBI Director Kash Patel said on X that the charges “stem from an ongoing investigation into the since-dissolved FBI Foreign Influence Task Force.”
Floris and Benavides, who both worked on that task force, testified that it “was not involved in the Hunter Biden investigations,” Patel wrote. “Documentary evidence, contemporaneous communications, and witness accounts contradict their testimony.”
Attorneys for Floris called the charges “nonsense,” and accused the Trump administration of deliberately filing them just before the Nov. 3 midterm election in hopes of gaining political advantage.
“Nikki Floris is a patriot. She 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,” read a statement from her counsel, including Margaret Donovan, Chris Mattei, Mary Dohrmann and Kyle Freeny.
“It’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election,” they wrote.
“The government’s reasons for charging Nikki are as transparent as they are unjust: to push a false narrative for a shot at political points,” their statement added. “It’s another sad day for the DOJ, but we look forward to Nikki’s day in court.”