The Justice Department on Friday accused two former F.B.I. officials of lying to Congress, saying that in testimony three years ago, they falsely minimized their work on investigations involving Hunter Biden, the son of the former president.
The charges against the two former officials, Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, were an escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to go after the law enforcement and intelligence personnel who cast doubt on unsubstantiated claims that Joseph R. Biden Jr. engaged in corrupt dealings in Ukraine. Those allegations, which have long obsessed President Trump and his supporters, were at the center of his first impeachment in 2019 and re-emerged late in his 2020 presidential campaign.
Both Ms. Floris and Mr. Benavides served on the F.B.I.’s Foreign Influence Task Force, a group created after Russia interfered in the 2016 election. It helped intelligence agencies monitor clandestine efforts by foreign governments to manipulate American politics, including by issuing warnings about covert foreign meddling to politicians and social media companies.
Allies of Mr. Trump have long criticized the task force — which was shut down by his second administration — because of the crucial role it played in undermining a narrative that Republicans seized on to strengthen Mr. Trump’s prospects in 2020. Members of the task force relayed warnings from the intelligence community about a covert Russian disinformation operation aimed at helping Mr. Trump win re-election by amplifying claims that Mr. Biden had engaged in corrupt dealings in Ukraine, where his son held a board seat on an energy firm.
The charges against Ms. Floris and Mr. Benavides, lodged in a 27-page criminal complaint filed in Federal District Court in Washington, were narrow, centering on a single count each of lying to Congress during testimony they provided to the House Judiciary Committee. But the Justice Department used the complaint to unspool a lengthy narrative that bolstered grievances that Mr. Trump has clung to for years — that the F.B.I. tried to undercut and suppress claims about purported Biden corruption in Ukraine.
Complaints are approved by a federal magistrate judge, but are not presented for a vote to a grand jury. If there is no quick plea deal, prosecutors must seek an indictment within 30 days. Typically, a case filed in Washington would be handled by the local U.S. attorney’s office, but in an unusual move, this one appeared to have been assigned to a prosecutor brought in from Kansas City.
At a hearing on Friday, Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said it was strange that prosecutors had not sought an indictment in the case. The judge set another hearing for Tuesday where prosecutors will have to lay out evidence showing there was probable cause to bring the charges.
After Republicans took control of the House committee in 2023, they opened a wide-ranging inquiry intended to address several of Mr. Trump’s grievances as the 2024 election drew near. Among its points of focus were the warnings by the Foreign Influence Task Force about claims of Biden corruption emanating from Ukraine and a separate but related controversy over a New York Post article published in October 2020 about files it said were taken from a laptop that Hunter Biden had left at a computer repair shop.
The criminal complaint cited excerpts from the testimony of Ms. Floris and Mr. Benavides in which the two disclaimed knowledge of — and involvement in — various internal F.B.I. discussions related to Hunter Biden. Those denials, prosecutors said, contradicted internal bureau messages in which the two officials appeared to discuss matters involving the younger Mr. Biden in some detail.
“Individually and collectively, these false statements allowed her to escape further questioning from a skeptical committee about the then-president’s son in the lead-up to the 2024 election,” the complaint said of Ms. Floris. “These knowing, willful, and materially false statements hindered a duly convened congressional committee from exercising oversight of the executive branch.”
Margaret Donovan, a lawyer for Ms. Floris, criticized the charges, saying in a statement on Friday that her client was “a patriot” who had served the country for nearly two decades.
“The D.O.J. has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts,” Ms. Donovan said. “It’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election.”
Kimberly Paschall, a lawyer for Mr. Benavides, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
But Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director and a trusted Trump loyalist, denounced the two former officials in his own statement.
“Lying to Congress by senior FBI officials strikes at the heart of our system,” Mr. Patel said. “No one is above the law.”
The controversy surrounding the Biden family stems in large part from a false narrative that in December 2015, while serving as vice president, the elder Mr. Biden pushed the Ukrainian government to fire one of its prosecutors in an effort to help an energy company that Hunter Biden worked for — perhaps even in exchange for a bribe.
In reality, an investigation into the company, Burisma, by the office of the Ukrainian prosecutor had stalled at the time. The prosecutor was widely seen as an obstacle to anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine, and replacing him with a more effective lead investigator was a policy goal of the Obama administration and shared by other Western governments.
The baseless claims about the elder Mr. Biden’s motivations in pushing to fire the prosecutor were at the center of the first impeachment of Mr. Trump in 2019. After Senate Republicans acquitted him in early 2020, two allies — Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa — kept pursuing their own investigation, aiming to issue a report before that year’s election.
The F.B.I.’s Foreign Influence Task Force, however, warned the lawmakers that their inquiry was being targeted by a covert Russian intelligence operation aimed at amplifying the Biden-Ukraine corruption narrative before the election.
Ms. Floris and Mr. Benavides briefed each lawmaker in August 2020. After the existence of that briefing leaked, Mr. Grassley and Mr. Johnson expressed outrage, accusing the F.B.I. of colluding with Democrats trying to discredit their work. Their report, issued in September 2020, rehashed Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, but did not accuse the elder Mr. Biden of corruption.
The next month, however, related issues flared again when the New York Post published an article about files it said came from a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden. Some of the files cited in the article included salacious images of Hunter Biden during a period of drug addiction. Others made reference to Burisma, though none of the materials proved corruption by the elder Mr. Biden.
Republicans have long been angry at the response to the Post article. The Foreign Influence Task Force had earlier warned social media companies to be on the lookout for Russian disinformation operations equivalent to the dumping of stolen Democratic emails in October 2016, and the companies leaped to the conclusion that the files were what they had been warned about and temporarily suppressed posts and links about the article.
The F.B.I. had, in fact, taken custody of Hunter Biden’s laptop, and the task force did not tell the social media companies that the Post article might not be at issue. F.B.I. officials have said they could not have confirmed that whatever files The Post had obtained were all authentic to vouch for them.
The complaint quoted emails showing that Ms. Floris circulated the senators’ September 2020 report to Mr. Benavides, and that both discussed the Post article the next month. But when the House Judiciary Committee asked them about those matters in 2023, Ms. Floris denied knowledge of what was in the report and both played down any involvement in the F.B.I.’s response to the article.
Zach Montague contributed reporting.
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