Two former FBI officials charged with lying to Congress about Hunter Biden laptop

Two former FBI officials who once ran the bureau's work on foreign election meddling turned themselves in Friday morning to face federal charges. Prosecutors in Washington accuse Nikki Cole Floris and Bradley Benavides of misleading House investigators about what their team knew of Hunter Biden's laptop before the 2020 election.

Each faces a single count of making a false statement to Congress. Floris is 46 and lives in Alexandria, Virginia. Benavides is 56 and lives in Aiken, South Carolina. The case was brought through a criminal complaint approved by a judge rather than an indictment from a grand jury, a route that lets prosecutors move without first winning over grand jurors.

The pair helped lead the Foreign Influence Task Force, a unit set up to spot and counter foreign efforts to sway American voters. Floris served as a deputy assistant director from the middle of 2019 to the middle of 2022. Benavides was a section chief from 2019 through the 2020 vote. The task force was shut down in 2025.

What prosecutors say

Both officials sat for closed-door interviews with the House Judiciary Committee in 2023. Floris spoke to the panel in July of that year and Benavides followed in September. According to the charging papers, each told lawmakers their unit played no part in the bureau's investigations tied to Hunter Biden.

Benavides went further, the government says, telling the committee he first learned of the laptop from an online encyclopedia entry he read in 2023. Prosecutors argue that claim falls apart against the record. The bureau's Baltimore office took custody of the laptop's contents from a Delaware computer repair shop in December 2019, months before the election season heated up.

An FBI affidavit filed with the complaint points to internal records, messages and witness accounts that investigators say show the task force did know about the device. The filing does not spell out every piece of that evidence.

Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, cast the case as a fight against officials who act as an unelected power center inside government. FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau would hold accountable anyone who turned their badge into a political weapon.

Lawyers call the case political

Attorneys for Floris described her as a patriot who gave close to two decades to the bureau. They called the accusations nonsense and noted that they landed days before a national election. Ronald S. Safer, who represents Benavides, said the charge has no basis and is plainly driven by politics. Both legal teams pushed for a quick hearing.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked former agents involved in election security work and has called the pair dirty cops. Critics of the administration say the case fits a pattern of prosecutions aimed at people the president views as enemies. In recent months grand juries in Washington have declined to return several indictments in cases with heavy political overtones.

The laptop saga

The laptop has been a flashpoint for years. Republicans have long argued that federal officials played down its importance while warning social media companies about foreign disinformation ahead of the 2020 race. Democrats have countered that those warnings were general and made in good faith.

Hunter Biden was later convicted on federal gun charges and pleaded guilty in a separate tax case. His father, President Joe Biden, pardoned him in December 2024. The charges filed Friday do not accuse Floris or Benavides of mishandling the laptop itself. The case turns only on what they told Congress about it.

A false statement charge carries a maximum of five years in prison, though sentences for first-time offenders are usually far lighter. Neither former official has entered a plea.