Two ex-FBI officials who helped “shape the public narrative” on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop were charged Friday for lying to Congress about their involvement in discrediting stories about the troubled first son, according to federal authorities.
Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides self-surrendered and are facing up to five years in prison each upon conviction. Through their lawyers, the former senior officials on the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) denied wrongdoing.
The House Judiciary Committee in 2023 interviewed the FBI officials as part of a broad inquiry into then-President Joe Biden’s alleged family corruption and influence peddling by his former drug addicted son. The pair blatantly denied any involvement in the Hunter Biden investigation during their congressional interviews, which, according to the feds, effectively closed down lines of inquiry.
“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,” said DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro, who announced the charges with FBI Director Kash Patel on Friday.
Internal FBI messages, emails, and other bureau employees’ testimony produced in the affidavit show the pair discussed Hunter Biden and his laptop frequently in the lead-up to the 2020 election.
Both Floris and Benavides “assisted with the FBI’s response to press inquiries” in the days after The Post’s bombshell Oct. 14, 2020, story on Hunter Biden’s laptop emails.
Benavides peddled the false narrative that the Hunter Biden laptop was a “Russian disinformation effort,” per an Oct. 16, 2020 email cited by the feds. Floris replied: “Looks good!”
Benavides even organized a Microsoft Outlook meeting “To Discuss Laptop.”
Both Floris and Benavides were part of an informal working group known as “Round River” that compiled derogatory, informant-provided details about Hunter Biden.
Floris was even looped into an email after the 2020 election that included salacious details about the younger Biden allegedly threatening a sex worker in Los Angeles with a text message: “Don’t forget that I know where you are, you have an ankle bracelet and that the laptop was recording.”
Asked by members of the House Judiciary Committee in a July 19, 2023, transcribed interview whether she had “any involvement in the Hunter Biden investigation,” Floris testified: “I did not.”
“I don’t have any knowledge of said laptop,” she also testified when pressed about Hunter Biden’s personal computer, which the FBI seized in December 2019.
Benavides also played dumb.
“When did you learn that there was an ongoing criminal investigation related to the laptop?” a Judiciary staffer asked.
“The Wikipedia page,” Benavides responded, also claiming to have learned from the internet encyclopedia that the feds had seized Hunter’s laptop.
Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) were also given so-called “defensive briefings” by Floris and Benavides, which both Republicans viewed as interfering with their own congressional efforts to look into Hunter Biden.
Floris’s attorneys said the US Justice Department “has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts,” per the Washington Post. Benavides’s attorney called for a court hearing next week on whether prosecutors had enough evidence to charge the “two lifetime public servants.”
“It’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election,” Floris’s attorneys said in a statement, calling her a “patriot.”
“These are the most senior figures to date who are being charged in the lawfare schemes against Trump, aside from [ex-FBI director] James Comey,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told The Post.
The arrests are the latest in stepped-up federal enforcement under Trump’s Justice Department, which just this month raided the DC home of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn) and charged a prominent Virginia Democrat with running an illegal marijuana empire.
