A federal magistrate judge on Monday dismissed a criminal case against two former FBI officials who were accused of lying to Congress in 2023 about their knowledge of Hunter Biden’s laptop, the latest rebuke of the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute those who have angered President Donald Trump.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui said prosecutors failed to show probable cause that the former officials, Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, misled the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee as it investigated President Joe Biden’s son before the 2024 presidential election.
Defense attorneys for the former officials argued that the charges were politically motivated and unsupported by evidence. Floris and Benavides had long drawn criticism from Trump and Republicans in Congress for their work securing the 2020 election, which Trump falsely claims was stolen from him.
In blistering comments from the bench Monday, Faruqui said he was deeply troubled that Justice Department leaders decided to pursue charges.
Faruqui said the criminal complaint against the former FBI officials, which he cast as rushed and flimsy, would have an “enormous chilling effect on congressional testimony” and “erodes public confidence in the workings of the Department of Justice.”
“What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization,” the judge said. He described the case as “marketing material to discourage people from joining the FBI.”
The Justice Department could seek to appeal Faruqui’s ruling or try to obtain an indictment from a grand jury to revive the case. The case is being prosecuted by the office of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro in D.C.
“The Department disagrees with the Magistrate’s decision, which remarkably appears to suggest that high-ranking government officials are immune from accountability for making materially false statements to Congress,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.
“We are evaluating all options but cannot comment further on an ongoing criminal investigation,” the spokesperson said, adding that the Justice Department would “continue to be guided by the facts, the evidence, and the law — not politics.”
Floris, a former analyst who led the intelligence division in the FBI’s Washington field office, and Benavides, a former deputy assistant director for counterintelligence, had both worked for decades at the FBI when their work began to draw criticism from Trump and Republicans in Congress.
FBI Director Kash Patel personally assigned the investigation into the former officials on July 17 to the bureau’s office in Kansas City, Missouri, and kept unusually close tabs on its progress, according to an agent assigned to the case, Bryan Witt, who testified in court last week.
The probe was launched one day after Trump gave an Oval Office address calling for the Justice Department to investigate “rogue bureaucrats” who the president said had covered up evidence of Chinese meddling in the 2020 presidential election, Witt said. He testified that the case against Floris and Benavides was seen as a witch hunt in the bureau’s Kansas City office.
During Trump’s second term, his administration has repeatedly taken aim at the president’s perceived foes.
The campaign has faced some setbacks, such as last week, when a grand jury in D.C. rejected federal prosecutors’ attempt to indict another perceived Trump foe, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, on a charge of lying to Congress about the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
Separately, a federal district judge in D.C., Trevor N. McFadden, is weighing whether to dismiss an unusual criminal information filed against former FBI director James B. Comey — the third criminal case filed against Comey in 13 months.
The case against Floris and Benavides was filed last month. An FBI affidavit alleged that Floris was asked repeatedly about her involvement in the Hunter Biden investigations, and denied having a role, during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on July 19, 2023. Benavides testified Sept. 23, 2023, and also was accused of minimizing his role in the investigations.
To prove the charge, prosecutors would have to show that Floris and Benavides not only made false statements in 2023 but that their testimony had a material effect on the House Judiciary Committee’s investigation.
The only witness prosecutors interviewed about the effect of the alleged false statements was Steve Castor, the longtime lawyer for Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, according to Witt. The FBI said as part of the case that the GOP-led panel might have issued subpoenas or sought more testimony had Floris and Benavides testified truthfully, an assessment attributed only to Castor.
Castor was at Floris’s interview in 2023 but was not present for Benavides’s interview, and had not read the transcript, according to Witt. That sparked an internal debate in the Justice Department about how to proceed with the case without a witness who had firsthand knowledge of what was material or not, Witt testified.
Defense attorneys zeroed in on Castor’s role during court proceedings last week. Faruqui said he was not persuaded by the claim that the House Judiciary Committee would have sought more documents or testimony. The investigation into Hunter Biden’s laptop was already running at full steam, he said, and it was unclear what more the panel could have sought.
“What documents? What testimony?” Faruqui said, directing his comments at Castor at one point. “You had three years to think of an answer for that, Mr. Castor. But I have nothing.”
In remarks outside the courthouse Monday, an attorney for Floris, Margaret Donovan, urged “everybody in the FBI and the intelligence community to hold your ground, to continue to think critically, and believe in the truth.”
“Nikki Floris has dedicated her life to defending our country and our Constitution, doing so with exceptional professionalism and patriotism,” her attorneys said in a statement Monday.
An attorney for Benavides, Kimberly Paschall, said the former official was a patriot and a public servant.
“He’s innocent,” Paschall said. “And we are grateful that Magistrate Judge Faruqui carefully weighed the woefully inadequate evidence that the government brought in this case against the law. We are pleased that he found no probable cause, an extremely low burden in the criminal justice system.”
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