Two former FBI agents who investigated Hunter Biden's criminal behavior back in 2020 and later testified before Congress are now facing charges. Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides surrendered themselves this morning and are now each facing one count of lying to Congress.
Nikki Floris, 46, a former intelligence analyst in charge in the bureau's Washington Field Office, and Bradley Benavides, 56, the former deputy assistant director at the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, each appeared in court on Friday in Washington, D.C. where they were presented with a copy of a criminal complaint charging them with one count each of lying to Congress about their roles on the Foreign Influence Task Force during the 2020 election, specifically the FBI's Hunter Biden investigations.
A statement of facts about the case lays out the claim being made. The focus is a group within the FBI called the Foreign Influence Task Force’s (FITF’s):
FLORIS and BENAVIDES are former FBI officials. FLORIS served as the Deputy Assistant Director and functional head of FITF from mid-2019 through mid-2022. BENAVIDES served as the Section Chief of FITF from mid-2019 through the 2020 election. Although FITF was originally focused on combating foreign influence by Russia, its scope expanded to include foreign influence by other nation-state actors...
As described in detail below, witness accounts and contemporaneous documents from December 2019 through September 2021 show that FLORIS and BENAVIDES knew about and were actively involved in the FBI’s investigations of Hunter Biden. FITF hosted classified briefings for the agents and prosecutors on the Hunter Biden case in which FLORIS and BENAVIDES were active participants. In October 2020, both FLORIS and BENAVIDES worked on the FBI’s internal and Congressional responses to reporting on the FBI’s receipt of Hunter Biden’s laptop, with FLORIS receiving, discussing, and passing along updates on the investigations through late 2021.
Hunter Biden was a recurring subject at FITF in briefings, emails, instant messages, and meetings, including internal discussion of whether information about him was Russian disinformation. According to an October 2026 interview of FBI Employee 1—who oversaw the Hunter Biden investigations for the FBI’s Criminal Division—personnel at FITF including FLORIS and BENAVIDES were in frequent communication with the Hunter Biden case teams. Information flowed in both directions; the case team would send FITF updates on their investigations and FITF would send information to the case team that FITF saw as relevant. According to an October 2026 interview of an FBI Baltimore Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC), herein referred to as FBI Employee 2, the FBI Baltimore Field Office brought the FITF into their investigations of Hunter Biden. FBI Employee 2 confirmed that FLORIS, BENAVIDES, and other members of the FITF had knowledge and awareness of their investigations and details of their investigations, including in relation to Hunter Biden’s laptop.
It goes on but you get the idea. These two agents were close to the Hunter Biden investigation and were getting updates on that investigation. When the story about the Hunter Biden investigation finally broke, they were both involved in the response.
On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published its story on the Hunter Biden laptop, and both FLORIS and BENAVIDES assisted with the FBI’s response to press inquiries the same day. FLORIS and BENAVIDES received an email from the FBI Cyber Division with the subject “Ny post… morning answer?” and a question about whether the FBI had the laptop. The Office of Congressional Affairs also sent them and a FITF Unit Chief, FBI Employee 3, an email titled “SSCI Request – Hunter Biden Laptop.” FLORIS answered that “CID is point on this matter” and copied Criminal Division (CID) management. A Director’s Office media coordinator told BENAVIDES that at a tech-industry call that day, “most of the questions were about the news reports about a laptop and Burisma.” When a FITF Unit Chief [FBI Employee 4] asked BENAVIDES whether FITF was tracking the laptop coverage, he replied: “Indeed...I’ve spoken to [initials of FBI Employee 1],” and “I would love to know if a copy exists, and was it provided to anyone…[initials of FBI Employee 1] did not know.”
After the 2020 election, Benavides left the FITF but Floris remained in it and continued to be involved in the Hunter Biden investigation.
Meanwhile, Senator Charles Grassley and Senator Ron Johnson had opened an investigation into the Biden clan's foreign business dealings Benavides and Floriis had given each senator a defensive briefing about the Hunter Biden investigation. A few years later the senators asked them to testify about those briefings.
On August 25, 2022, Senators Grassley and Johnson sent a letter to FLORIS and BENAVIDES requesting their appearance to testify regarding FITF and the defensive briefings...
To investigate the FBI’s handling of the Hunter Biden investigations and related issues, the House Judiciary Committee interviewed FLORIS and BENAVIDES on July 19, 2023, and September 28, 2023, respectively.
It was during this interview that Floris allegedly lied about her connection to the Hunter Biden case.
FLORIS was asked repeatedly about her—and FITF’s—involvement in the FBI’s investigations into Hunter Biden. In no uncertain terms, she testified that, to her knowledge, FITF had no involvement in the investigations or awareness thereof. For example:
Q. Did you have any involvement in the Hunter Biden investigation?
A. I did not.
She was asked repeatedly whether she was involved in any discussions at FITF about Hunter Biden whatsoever:
Q. Was there ever a discussion at the FITF about Hunter Biden?
A. No. At least not with me. And again, there’s a whole team below me, so whether or not conversations happened, I don’t know, but I personally did not have any conversations.
In a separate interview, Benavides gave similar answers:
BENAVIDES, in no uncertain terms, disclaimed any contemporaneous knowledge of the Hunter Biden laptop. For example:
Q. Are you familiar with the October 14th, 2020, New York Post story regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop?
A. Only in the—from the prep material. I read through it.
Q. Do you recall if you were aware of it in October of 2020, when the story came out or shortly thereafter?
A. I don’t know if I would have gotten it from the story, but I was aware of a Hunter Biden laptop narrative that was out in the public domain in 2020.
Q. And, to your understanding, what was that Hunter Biden laptop narrative?
A. My understanding, and I’ll be honest, some of this came from 2 days ago. I was on Wikipedia, anticipating what might be asked. There was a purported laptop dropped off at a repair shop attributed to Hunter Biden.
Q. And, to your knowledge, is the FBI in possession of that laptop?
A. Only because of the Wikipedia article, my understanding is, according to that article, the FBI is in possession of the laptop.
He denied it repeatedly:
BENAVIDES repeatedly was asked about the Hunter Biden laptop and repeatedly gave the same answer:
Q. When did you learn that there was an ongoing criminal investigation related to the laptop?
A. The Wikipedia page.
Q. In prep for today?
A. Yes.
Q. So you had no knowledge during your tenure at the FBI?
A. Of an investigation related to the laptop?
Q. Yes.
A. No.
All of this seems pretty cut and dried. Both agents lied about what they knew and when they knew it. But those facts seem less important to CBS News than the timing of the charges.
"The alleged conduct happened years ago. The government has had the information about this for years," said Ron Safer, an attorney for Benavides. He asked Zia Faruqui, the magistrate judge at Friday's hearing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, to immediately schedule a preliminary hearing "as soon as humanly possible" to review whether there was adequate probable cause that a crime was committed.
The politically charged case was also unsealed just about two weeks before the midterm election — a fact that may raise questions by DOJ veterans about the timing of a case involving testimony to Congress that occurred more than three years ago.
To be fair, the timing is a little October surprise-ish. The filings make it seem like they really have the goods on these two, so why wasn't this charged a year ago? Stay tuned for more on this one.