WASHINGTON — The Justice Department announced Friday that two former senior FBI officials have been charged with making false statements to Congress about the bureau’s Foreign Influence Task Force and its handling of matters connected to Hunter Biden ahead of and after the 2020 election, according to the department’s announcement and court reporting on the case.
Nikki Cole Floris, 46, of Alexandria, Virginia, and Bradley Benavides, 56, of Aiken, South Carolina, each face one count of making false statements in a matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch, under 18 U.S.C. 1001(a)(2). Both surrendered on arrest warrants, according to the Justice Department.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro said in the department’s statement: “Lying to Congress by anyone strikes at the heart of our democratic system — but when senior FBI agents lie to Congress believing they are above the law, it’s time to bring the hammer of justice down on them.” Attorney General Todd Blanche said public servants, including federal law enforcement officials, “cannot lie to Congress and get away with it.” FBI Director Kash Patel said one of the defendants was on record privately claiming to be “running a shadow government” during the 2020 election, and added that “weaponization will never be tolerated at this FBI.”
What prosecutors allege
According to the affidavit supporting the charges, the Foreign Influence Task Force that Floris led through mid-2022 was involved in discussions about Hunter Biden, the contents of his laptop and related investigations, and in preparing responses when reporting on the laptop became public in October 2020. Prosecutors allege that testimony the two officials later gave to Congress denied or minimized that involvement, and that documents, emails, instant messages, meeting records and witness interviews contradict their accounts.
The FBI’s Baltimore field office had obtained the contents of the laptop from a repair shop in December 2019 as part of tax and money-laundering investigations, according to the affidavit’s account. Floris and Benavides testified to congressional committees in 2023. The charges were filed years after that testimony, weeks before the November midterm elections.
The defense response
Counsel for Floris rejected the charges outright. In a statement issued Friday by Margaret Donovan and Chris Mattei of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder and Mary Dohrmann and Kyle R. Freeny of the Washington Litigation Group, her lawyers said: “Nikki Floris is a patriot. She served our nation as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years. Yet today, the DOJ has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts. It’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election.” The statement added: “We look forward to Nikki’s day in court.”
Floris served as a deputy assistant director in the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. The case will now proceed in federal court, where the defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty. No trial date has been announced.
The charges land in the middle of a long-running political fight over how the FBI handled the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020, a dispute that has already produced years of congressional hearings. Friday’s case tests a narrower question — not what the bureau did in 2020, but whether two of its former officials told Congress the truth about it afterward.
Source: Statement of counsel for Nikki Floris, October 23, 2026. Reporting on the charges and the Justice Department announcement was also reviewed against additional published accounts of the affidavit.
