Judge Dismisses Case Against Two Former FBI Officials Accused of Lying to Congress About Hunter Biden’s Laptop
U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui dismissed the case against Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides on Monday, finding no probable cause and calling the investigation rushed and political, a setback for the Justice Department days before the midterm elections.
A federal judge on Monday dismissed a criminal complaint against two former FBI officials accused of making false statements to Congress about the investigation into Hunter Biden’s laptop, finding there was no probable cause to bring the case.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui dismissed the case against Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, both former top Washington-based intelligence specialists. “What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization,” Faruqui said during a Monday hearing, according to CNN and the Associated Press. He also said he was deeply troubled by what had happened in the case.
What the judge faulted in the case
Faruqui found that several of the alleged statements were not false and that the ones that were lacked evidence of intent or motive to deceive, CNN reported. During hearings last week, FBI agent Bryan Witt testified that he had found no evidence of a motive for the former officials to lie to Congress about the laptop investigation, and no evidence that Republican lawmakers’ investigation into the Biden family slowed down or changed because of the answers the defendants gave.
The judge also pointed to the timing and the way the case was brought. According to the Associated Press, the investigation was opened a day after a primetime speech by President Donald Trump in which he repeated grievances over his 2020 election loss, and it was mandated and closely tracked by FBI Director Kash Patel. The Justice Department brought the case, which rests on statements made in 2023, two weeks before Tuesday’s midterm voting. Faruqui questioned why prosecutors used a criminal complaint rather than seeking a grand jury indictment, and he criticized an amended complaint filed overnight with an added charge that had not first been cleared with the court.
The case accused Floris and Benavides of misleading Congress in 2023 about their involvement in, and knowledge of, efforts to investigate a laptop the Justice Department says was dropped off by Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019. Prosecutors also cited a 2020 defensive briefing the two gave lawmakers, which Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have said was used to undercut their investigation into the Biden administration.
The dismissal does not stop the Justice Department from seeking a grand jury indictment against the two former officials, the Associated Press reported. The ruling is still a setback for the department, given the difficulty it has had persuading grand juries in Washington to return indictments in politically charged prosecutions.
Reporting based on coverage by CNN and the Associated Press.
