Ex-FBI employees charged with lying to Congress over Hunter Biden inquiries

The Justice Department has charged two former FBI employees with making false statements to Congress in connection with the bureau's investigations into Hunter Biden.

Bradley Benavides, 56, and Nikki Floris, 46, each face a single criminal count stemming from testimony before lawmakers in 2023. They were charged by complaint, which means prosecutors have yet to secure an indictment from a grand jury.

The laptop of Hunter Biden, former President Joe Biden's son, was the subject of intense scrutiny after The New York Post reported weeks before the 2020 presidential election that the device was abandoned at a Delaware repair shop in 2019, and then obtained by President Trump's former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Republicans have long accused the FBI of mishandling the laptop and the investigations into the younger Biden. Hunter Biden was convicted of federal gun charges and later pleaded guilty to separate tax offenses.

In a statement on X, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro, said 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."

Benavides and Floris both appeared in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Friday morning before Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

Faruqui noted that both of the defendants have "sparkling backgrounds" in federal law enforcement and were longtime dedicated public servants. He also noted that charging them by criminal complaint for conduct that is "quite old" is unusual.

Benavides and Floris are due back in court for a preliminary hearing on Tuesday.

The Post reported Hunter Biden's laptop showed wrongdoing by then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who subsequently won the election. Some of the data on the laptop was later ascertained to belong to Hunter Biden. House Republicans subsequently launched an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, focusing on Hunter Biden's business dealings at the time his father was vice president. But no evidence has ever been presented that Joe Biden financially gained from his son's business activities.