The Justice Department charged two former FBI officials with lying to Congress about Hunter Biden laptop investigations, both surrendered Friday as the FBI director vows no tolerance for weaponization.
Nikki Cole Floris and Bradley Benavides, once senior leaders on the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, turned themselves in Friday on arrest warrants after federal prosecutors accused them of false testimony about the bureau’s work on Hunter Biden matters.
Fox News reported the Justice Department charged the pair with lying to Congress about their involvement in FBI investigations into the former president’s son, including issues tied to his laptop. The task force they helped run has since been dissolved.
Floris served as deputy assistant director and functional head of the Foreign Influence Task Force. Benavides was the task force’s section chief. Both now face criminal charges over what they told lawmakers in 2023.
The Justice Department filed a statement of facts that points to sharp gaps between the officials’ sworn answers and bureau records.
Floris testified before the House Judiciary Committee in 2023. She denied any involvement in the investigation into Biden’s son. She answered no when asked whether there was “ever a discussion at the FITF about Hunter Biden” and whether she had “any involvement in the Hunter Biden investigation.”
Prosecutors say email logs show she discussed Hunter Biden with colleagues at the bureau anyway.
Benavides told lawmakers he learned “that there was an ongoing criminal investigation related to the laptop” by reading the Wikipedia page on the story. The Justice Department says emails show he was in contact with the team working the Hunter Biden investigation and that he met with that team before he sat down with lawmakers.
The Washington Examiner reported that Floris, 46, and Benavides, 56, surrendered Friday, and that FBI Director Kash Patel said documentary evidence, contemporaneous communications, and witness accounts contradict their July and September 2023 testimony that the task force was not involved in the FBI’s Hunter Biden investigations.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro framed the case as a direct hit on accountability inside federal law enforcement.
"Lying to Congress by anyone strikes at the heart of our democratic system, but 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,"
Pirro also said senior officials who choose deception over duty undermine the institutions they swore to uphold, and that the action makes clear no one is above the law.
"When senior officials entrusted with safeguarding our nation’s security choose deception over duty, they undermine the very institutions they swore to uphold. Today’s action makes clear that no one is above the law, and we will hold accountable all who obstruct the truth."
FBI Director Kash Patel tied the arrests to the 2020 election period and to the now-dissolved task force.
"This morning the FBI arrested two former FBI members of the now dissolved Foreign Influence Task Force, Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, both of whom allegedly lied to Congress in 2023 on matters regarding investigations related to the 2020 election,"
Patel added a sharper charge about internal culture during that cycle.
"One of these individuals is on record privately claiming to be ‘running a shadow government’ during the 2020 election. As we’ve said repeatedly: weaponization will never be tolerated at this FBI."
Attorneys for both defendants rejected the charges and cast them as late-stage politics.
Lawyers for Floris called her a patriot with nearly two decades as an FBI intelligence officer and said the Justice Department accused her falsely on the say-so of politicians rather than facts.
"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. It’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election,"
Counsel for Benavides stressed his record against terrorists and foreign agents and branded the complaint political.
"For 20 years Brad Benavides worked tirelessly to protect the public from terrorists and agents of foreign governments. He carried with distinction the heavy burden of thwarting terrorist plots to kill Americans and other innocents. Brad protected our democracy against those who would destroy it,"
His lawyer went further, calling the charges a disgrace and a transparently political complaint, while insisting the truth will come out in court.
The charges sit on top of a longer fight over how the FBI handled Hunter Biden’s laptop and foreign-influence claims before the 2020 election.
Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson previously accused Floris and Benavides of taking part in a 2020 FBI briefing about Russian disinformation. The senators said that briefing was meant to undercut their own probe into Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.
Claims that the laptop was Russian disinformation fueled intense controversy in the final stretch of that campaign. Years later, the FBI authenticated the laptop during Hunter Biden’s 2024 federal gun trial, when prosecutors introduced it as evidence.
That sequence matters. Officials told Congress one story in 2023. Prosecutors now say bureau emails and contacts tell another. The laptop itself moved from disputed object to courtroom exhibit. The Foreign Influence Task Force no longer exists.
What remains is a criminal case about whether two former task force leaders told the truth under oath about what they knew and what they did.
The core allegation is not exotic. Lawmakers asked whether the task force discussed Hunter Biden and whether these officials took part in the investigation. The answers came back as denials. The Justice Department says the paper trail does not match.
Floris’s no’s on FITF discussions and personal involvement sit against email traffic prosecutors describe as proof of those very talks. Benavides’s Wikipedia account sits against emails that place him in contact with the investigative team and in a meeting with that team before his session with lawmakers.
If those records hold up, the problem is straightforward: senior FBI figures gave Congress a clean story that internal communications appear to dirty up. If the defense is right, the government is stretching old disputes into criminal counts for political timing. A courtroom will have to sort that out.
Either way, the public now has something it lacked for years of laptop arguments and briefing fights: sworn testimony set against specific bureau emails, with arrest warrants already served.
When FBI leaders treat Congress like an audience to manage instead of a branch to answer, trust collapses. These charges put that habit on trial where it belongs.
