Two ex-FBI leaders who ran the bureau’s foreign-influence task force have been charged with lying to Congress about Hunter Biden probes, and prosecutors say records flatly contradict their sworn accounts.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia announced Friday that Nikki Cole Flores, 46, and Bradley Benavides, 56, surrendered on arrest warrants. Each faces a charge of making false statements in a matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch, a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2), the federal false-statements statute that covers lies to Congress.
Breitbart News reported the charges stem from an ongoing investigation into the since-dissolved FBI Foreign Influence Task Force, or FITF, the unit that led the bureau’s work to secure the 2020 election from foreign malign influence.
Flores headed the FITF from mid-2019 until mid-2022. Benavides served as a FITF section chief from mid-2019 through the 2020 election. In 2023, the House Judiciary Committee interviewed both about the task force’s role in the FBI’s Hunter Biden investigations. Each was warned that lying to Congress is a crime.
They testified anyway that the FITF had no involvement in those probes.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Flores told the Judiciary Committee she was involved in no discussions about Hunter Biden while she was at the FITF. Benavides testified he only learned the FBI possessed Hunter Biden’s laptop from reading a Wikipedia article in 2023.
Prosecutors say that was false. An affidavit supporting the criminal complaint cites documentary evidence, contemporaneous communications, and witness accounts that contradict the testimony.
The office stated the evidence shows Flores discussed the FBI’s investigations into Hunter Biden routinely for more than a year, both inside the FITF and with others in the bureau. It also stated that, contrary to his Wikipedia claim, Benavides regularly discussed the laptop with FBI officials in the leadup to the 2020 election.
In that same period, the FBI had several investigations into Hunter Biden in which the FITF participated. Those facts land hard against the clean denials both officials gave lawmakers years later, a pattern also tracked in coverage of ex-FBI task force leaders facing Congress over Hunter Biden.
"Floris and Benavides testified that the FITF was not involved in the FBI’s investigations into Hunter Biden. For example, Floris told the Judiciary Committee that she was involved in no discussions about Hunter Biden while she was at the FITF. Benavides testified that he only learned of the FBI’s possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop from reading a Wikipedia article in 2023."
That account comes from the U.S. Attorney’s Office press materials describing the complaint. The same office said the affidavit shows the opposite through records and witnesses.
FBI Director Kash Patel announced on social media Friday that the two former officials had been taken into custody. He said Flores was on record privately claiming to be “running a shadow government” during the 2020 election in her FITF role.
Patel framed the charges as a basic test of whether senior officials answer to the same rules as everyone else.
"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 statement puts the FITF case inside a wider cleanup of units Patel says abused their power. For readers following the laptop and related FBI work, the charging theory overlaps with earlier reporting on ex-FBI leaders charged over Hunter Biden laptop work.
The sequence is straightforward. The FITF operated through the 2020 cycle. Flores and Benavides held leadership posts. Prosecutors now say the task force took part in multiple Hunter Biden investigations and that both officials talked about that work at the time.
Three years later, the House Judiciary Committee brought them in. Staff warned them that false statements to Congress are a crime. They still denied FITF involvement and, in Benavides’s case, claimed a 2023 Wikipedia discovery as his first notice of the laptop.
Friday’s complaint calls those answers false and backs the claim with the affidavit’s mix of documents, messages, and witnesses. Flores and Benavides surrendered rather than face open arrest.
Pirro, commenting on the case, tied the charges to a broader demand for accountability when senior agents treat Congress as optional.
"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 line is blunt because the underlying conduct is simple: sworn denials stacked against contemporaneous records.
The charges do not themselves retry the underlying Hunter Biden investigations. They target what two FITF leaders told Congress about the bureau’s own work. Still, the subject matter keeps the Biden family in view, including later moments when Hunter Biden admitted his father’s pardon damaged the Constitution.
In a separate September exchange referenced alongside the case, a Republican senator sought testimony from Hunter Biden and Donald Trump Jr. on business dealings. Hunter Biden’s reply was short: “Bring it on.”
That posture does not answer the FITF testimony problem. Flores and Benavides are the ones under federal charge for what they said under warning in 2023. The public record now includes a criminal complaint asserting that their denials cannot be squared with the bureau’s own files and the people who worked beside them.
Political and legal pressure around Democratic family investigations has continued in other lanes as well, including moves such as Trump setting aside PAC funds ahead of possible Democratic family probes. The FITF case is narrower: two former officials, one statute, and a claim that they misled Congress about work they allegedly handled in real time.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office describes an ongoing look at the dissolved FITF. The immediate counts are false-statement charges under the legislative-branch provision of § 1001. The supporting affidavit is the bridge between the 2023 interviews and Friday’s warrants.
Key points prosecutors have put forward include:
None of that requires readers to relitigate every strand of the Hunter Biden inquiries. It requires them to weigh whether senior FBI officials told the House the truth about their own unit’s role. Prosecutors say they did not.
Exact calendar dates beyond the relative “Friday” announcement, full docket numbers, and the complete text of every affidavit exhibit were not laid out in the initial public materials. The charging theory, the statute, the roles, the testimony claims, and the contradiction summary were.
Flores, identified in charging language as Floris, and Benavides now face the ordinary criminal process that follows a complaint and surrender. The House already did its interviews. The Justice Department has now filed.
When FBI leaders who handled election-security and influence work give Congress answers that their own records appear to gut, the damage is institutional. Accountability starts with charging the false statements, and letting a court test the proof.