Two former FBI Foreign Influence Task Force leaders face charges for lying to Congress on the Hunter Biden laptop, a move their attorneys call a political hit timed to elections.
AP News detailed a criminal complaint accusing former FBI officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides of false statements about the Hunter Biden laptop and the bureau’s Foreign Influence Task Force.
The pair appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui. Prosecutors filed the complaint less than two weeks before the Nov. 3 elections. A preliminary hearing was set for the following Tuesday.
Both had served in leadership roles on the task force. The complaint says Hunter Biden was a recurring subject at its meetings and that the two were deeply engaged in related investigations.
In 2023 testimony to lawmakers, the filing alleges, they downplayed that firsthand knowledge. Benavides claimed he learned the FBI possessed the laptop through Wikipedia. Floris claimed she had no knowledge of Hunter Biden as a discussion subject at the task force.
Internal records paint a different picture of their work in the run-up to the 2020 election, when the laptop first became public.
The New York Post reported that Floris and Benavides self-surrendered and each face up to five years. Internal FBI messages show they discussed the laptop frequently and helped shape press responses after the Post’s October 2020 story.
Benavides promoted the claim that the laptop was a Russian disinformation effort in an email Floris approved. Both took part in a working group that compiled derogatory details on Hunter Biden.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro stated the core allegation plainly.
"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."
The laptop itself surfaced when the New York Post publicized a computer it said was dropped off about a year earlier at a Wilmington, Delaware repair shop and obtained via Rudy Giuliani. Then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe attested to its authenticity. The FBI under Chris Wray told Congress it had nothing to add to that statement.
Dozens of former U.S. intelligence officials had signed a letter saying the laptop bore “classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” The new charges revisit how the bureau handled that period and what its own people later told Congress.
Documentary evidence, contemporaneous communications, and witness accounts contradict the 2023 testimony, according to FBI Director Kash Patel. The Washington Examiner noted Floris, 46, and Benavides, 56, were taken into custody on arrest warrants, with Patel pointing to material that undercuts their July and September 2023 statements.
Patel tied the case to a broader cleanup.
"Lying to Congress by senior FBI officials strikes at the heart of our system. No one is above the law."
The Foreign Influence Task Force was established in the first Trump administration. It later drew sustained Republican criticism over its role around the 2020 race. Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded it in February 2025.
Readers tracking related bureau controversies have seen parallel threads, including ex-FBI task force leaders facing Congress charges over the same laptop fight.
Defense attorneys rejected the case as politics, not proof. Floris’s lawyers called her “a patriot” who “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."
Lawyers for Benavides called the filing “baseless criminal charges against him in a transparently political complaint” and “another sad day for the Department of Justice.”
"But now we are in court, and the truth will come out: Brad Benavides is a true patriot who devoted his career to protecting this country and its people. These charges are a disgrace."
Judge Faruqui remarked that it is “rare that we have charges this old coming in this nature.” He set the swift preliminary hearing date, citing the “sword of Damocles” hanging over the defendants, over prosecutors’ objections.
Breitbart reported the pair were charged under 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2) for false statements to Congress about task force involvement in the Hunter Biden investigations. Evidence shows Floris routinely discussed those probes and Benavides discussed the laptop before the 2020 election, contrary to their testimony.
That record sits alongside other recent Justice Department actions in the same narrow window. Agents searched the Washington home of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar in an immigration fraud investigation. A corruption indictment was unsealed against Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas. Omar called the search an “attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.” Lucas said she “will not back down.”
Hunter Biden was later charged and convicted of gun and tax offenses, then pardoned by Joe Biden in the final weeks of that presidency. The laptop fight never left the political bloodstream. For more on the charging papers themselves, see coverage of ex-FBI leaders charged over the laptop testimony.
Fox News carried Patel’s update that the FBI had arrested the two former task force members who allegedly lied in 2023 on matters tied to 2020 election investigations. Pirro added that when senior FBI agents lie to Congress believing they are above the law, accountability has to follow.
Patel has also overseen firings of agents tied to investigations of Trump or seen as working against the administration’s agenda. The laptop case is one of the years-old matters now back under hard review.
Other bureau files continue to surface in high-stakes settings, from FBI tracking in the Mar-a-Lago probe to fresh operational arrests.
The complaint route itself, charges filed without a prior grand jury indictment, drew the judge’s notice. Prosecutors in the nation’s capital have struggled at times to win indictments from grand juries in high-profile cases. Filing by complaint put Floris and Benavides in court faster.
What the internal emails, witness accounts, and 2023 transcripts show will now be tested in open proceedings rather than closed briefings. The same bureau that once had little to add on the laptop’s authenticity is watching two of its former task force leaders answer for their later statements to Congress.
Separate FBI casework keeps moving in the background, including records on the Butler assassination attempt and other domestic threat probes that never make the laptop headlines.
Floris and Benavides deny the accusations through counsel and will have their chance to confront the evidence. The dates, the messages, and the testimony are no longer matters for selective recollection.
When senior officials treat Congress as optional, the public is left with a two-tier system. Equal rules for the badge and the ballot box are not optional extras, they are the baseline.