Two former FBI intelligence officials who specialized in foreign election interference were charged Friday with making false statements to Congress about their roles in investigating Hunter Biden's laptop in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides surrendered Friday and made their first appearance in federal court in Washington, reports the
AP. Said US Attorney Jeanine Pirro on
X: "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."
"Nikki Floris is a patriot. ... Yet today, the DOJ has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts," her attorneys said in a statement. "It's no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election." The charges mark the latest in a series of splashy and politically charged investigative actions the Department of Justice has undertaken in the run-up to the midterms.
In 2020, Floris and Benavides briefed GOP lawmakers in what Sen. Chuck Grassley then said was an attempt to paint the Biden investigation as a Russian disinformation campaign, notes the Washington Post. The prosecution, a rare Department of Justice criminal case against a former employee, revisits a tangled and peculiar saga that roiled the final weeks of the 2020 race, which incumbent President Trump went on to lose to Biden's father, Joe.
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