Two former senior FBI officials face federal charges for lying to Congress about the bureau’s Hunter Biden investigations after surrendering on arrest warrants Friday.
Nikki Cole Flores, 46, and Bradley Benavides, 56, were charged with making false statements to the legislative branch after the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia announced the case Friday. Both surrendered on arrest warrants and were taken into custody.
The charges center on their 2023 interviews with the House Judiciary Committee about the FBI’s since-dissolved Foreign Influence Task Force, or FITF, and its role in probes involving Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden. Prosecutors say the pair denied involvement that evidence later contradicted.
Flores headed the FITF from mid-2019 until mid-2022. Benavides served as its section chief from mid-2019 through the 2020 election. The task force led the FBI’s work to protect that election from foreign malign influence.
In 2023, the House Judiciary Committee questioned both former officials about the FITF’s part in the Hunter Biden investigations. Each was warned that lying to Congress is a federal crime.
They testified that the FITF was not involved. Flores told the committee she took part in no discussions about Hunter Biden while she worked on the task force. Benavides testified that he first learned the FBI had Hunter Biden’s laptop by reading a Wikipedia article in 2023.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office described a different record in its announcement of the charges under 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2), the federal statute that makes false statements to Congress a crime.
"Evidence shows that Floris discussed the FBI’s investigations into Hunter Biden routinely for more than a year both within the FITF and with others in the FBI. Contrary to his assertion that he learned of the Hunter Biden laptop from Wikipedia, Benavides regularly discussed the laptop with FBI officials in the leadup to the 2020 election."
Prosecutors added that the FBI ran several Hunter Biden investigations in the lead-up to the 2020 election in which the FITF took part. An affidavit supporting the criminal complaint cites documentary evidence, contemporaneous communications, and witness accounts that contradict the congressional testimony.
FBI Director Kash Patel announced the custody status in a social media post Friday and framed the charges as part of a broader cleanup.
Patel stated that Flores was “on record privately claiming to be ‘running a shadow government’ during the 2020 election in her role on the FITF.”
"Lying to Congress by senior FBI officials strikes at the heart of our system. No one is above the law. The FBI has already dismantled the corrupt CR-15 squad that engaged in political weaponization targeting their opponents, including President Trump."
That message puts the FITF case inside a larger claim of political weaponization inside the bureau, conduct Patel says the current leadership has already begun to dismantle.
Breitbart News reported the charging announcement alongside sharp comments from Pirro, who cast the case as a test of whether senior agents answer to the same rules as everyone else.
"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. 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."
The Justice Department’s own description tracks the same core claim: the FITF was not a bystander. Flores, prosecutors say, talked about the Hunter Biden investigations as a routine matter for more than a year inside the task force and across the FBI. Benavides, they say, discussed the laptop with bureau officials well before the 2020 election, not years later on a public website.
The laptop denial is the sharpest single conflict in the charging papers. Benavides told Congress he discovered the FBI’s possession of the device through Wikipedia in 2023. The affidavit says he had already been talking about that laptop with FBI colleagues in the run-up to the election.
Flores’s denial is just as direct. She told lawmakers she had no Hunter Biden discussions while assigned to the FITF. Prosecutors say the opposite: those discussions were routine for more than a year, both inside the task force and with other FBI personnel.
Those contradictions matter because the House Judiciary Committee was examining how the bureau handled foreign-influence and related work around a presidential election. False answers in that setting are not a paperwork dispute. They are a federal offense when they sit inside the jurisdiction of Congress.
The Foreign Influence Task Force no longer exists. While it operated, it led the FBI’s effort to secure the 2020 election from foreign malign influence. Flores ran it for roughly three years. Benavides was its section chief through the election itself.
Charging documents say that same unit participated in several FBI investigations into Hunter Biden during the pre-election period. That participation is the fact the former officials allegedly buried when they sat for the 2023 interviews.
The Justice Department describes the FITF probe as ongoing even though the task force itself has been dissolved. Friday’s charges are the public face of that work so far.
Hunter Biden has separately faced Republican pressure to appear before Congress. In response to a Republican senator’s request that he and Donald Trump Jr. testify about business dealings, Hunter Biden answered, “Bring it on.” That exchange sits outside the false-statements case, but it keeps the same family name in the oversight fight that produced the 2023 interviews.
Flores and Benavides now face the criminal process they were warned about when they testified. The affidavit, the contemporaneous messages, and the witness accounts will be tested in court. What will not be tested is the basic rule the charges enforce: senior FBI officials do not get a free pass when they mislead the committee charged with watching them.
