The Justice Department’s investigation into two former FBI officials who allegedly gave false congressional testimony about Hunter Biden “would be viewed as political” and was a distraction, an FBI agent said in court Tuesday, describing his concerns about being assigned to the case.
The agent, Bryan Witt, made those unexpectedly blunt concessions as he was being questioned by a defense attorney for Nikki Floris, a former FBI official charged last week with making false statements to a Republican-led House committee that was investigating President Joe Biden’s son in 2023. Bradley Benavides, another former FBI official, was charged with the same offense.
According to charging documents filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, Floris and Benavides gave testimony to the House Judiciary Committee in 2023 that minimized their participation in FBI probes into Hunter Biden and a laptop he owned.
Defense attorneys for the former FBI intelligence officials have disputed the charges as politically motivated and unsupported by evidence.
The former officials have come under fire from President Donald Trump and his allies for their work on security around the 2020 presidential election, which the president falsely claims was stolen from him.
Witt testified Tuesday about the case during a key court hearing about whether the government had probable cause to charge the former agents, neither of whom has been indicted by a grand jury. Witt’s testimony is continuing Wednesday.
The veteran FBI agent said the case originated over the summer. FBI Director Kash Patel personally assigned the investigation on July 17 to the bureau’s Kansas City, Missouri, office, where Witt works as a special agent, he testified Tuesday.
Patel’s letter came one day after Trump gave an Oval Office address calling for Justice Department probes into “rogue bureaucrats” who the president said had covered up evidence of Chinese meddling in the 2020 presidential election, Witt said.
Trump made reference to Floris in that address, though he did not name her. Patel’s letter did mention her by name and cited two federal statutes — on conspiracy and obstruction of justice — as potential offenses to investigate, Witt said.
“I had concerns about, this would be viewed as political because it was announced the night before and I was tasked with this next morning,” Witt said. “President Trump had an address the night before, and two of the items he mentioned, we were tasked with in Kansas City.”
Witt called the probe a “huge distraction” from his other work and added that people in the Kansas City FBI office “generally viewed it” as a witch hunt, even as Patel and other high-level executives continued to check in on its progress.
“They were conveying to us that this was prioritized and they wanted us to investigate aggressively,” Witt testified.
Witt’s half-hearted endorsement of his own case could signal trouble ahead for prosecutors, who will need a grand jury to approve the charges for the case against Floris and Benavides to proceed.
“I did not ask to be on this investigation,” Witt said at one point during hours of cross-examination.
He said he was busy with his own cases in Kansas City and described his background as “completely criminal, unclassified, and not much intel.”
During Trump’s second term, his administration has repeatedly taken aim at the president’s perceived foes and issues that have angered him.
The campaign has faced some setbacks, such as on Tuesday, 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.
In addition, U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui has voiced concerns about the unprecedented steps prosecutors have taken to charge Floris and Benavides. He could decide to toss the criminal complaint.
A key question in the case is whether the testimony from Floris and Benavides somehow swayed the House Judiciary Committee’s investigation.
In the original affidavit laying out the charge against Floris and Benavides, the FBI said a House Judiciary Committee staff member who was present for both of their interviews in 2023 said the alleged false statements “influenced the Committee’s investigation significantly, including by thwarting investigative follow-up interviews and subpoenas.”
In court Tuesday, however, Witt said that assertion was not accurate.
The staff member was actually Steve Castor, the longtime general counsel for Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, Witt said.
Witt said Castor had “supervised” both interviews but was not present for Benavides’s remarks. Castor had not read the transcript of Benavides’s testimony as of Monday, when he was interviewed by the FBI, Witt said.
The FBI was told to pose questions in writing to the House Judiciary Committee because of concerns surrounding lawmakers’ protections under the Constitution’s speech-and-debate clause, according to Witt and an assistant U.S. attorney at the hearing, John Borchert.
But Castor said the relevant staff members working for the committee in 2023 were no longer employed there, and they were not questioned, Witt said.
Under cross-examination by Benavides defense attorney Ron Safer, Witt said the original affidavit also stated incorrectly that the former FBI officials were sworn to tell the truth during their 2023 interviews with the House panel. Benavides was not under oath at the time of his House testimony, Witt conceded.
“But in your affidavit, you said they were sworn to tell the truth,” Safer said.
“That’s not an intentionally false statement,” Witt said.
“You didn’t intend to deceive the court … but it was completely inaccurate?” Safer asked.
“Correct,” Witt said.
Faruqui, who is presiding over the hearing, said he was troubled that prosecutors had filed an amended charging document shortly after midnight Tuesday seeking to add an obstruction count against Floris and Benavides to the complaint charging them with false statements.
The obstruction charge was not approved by a judge or grand jury before prosecutors included it in a public court document, which could harm the defendants, Faruqui said. He declined to add the charge during Tuesday’s hearing.
“Why, today, in this one case, have you changed the entire history of your charge cases?” Faruqui asked Borchert, the prosecutor.
Benavides’s attorney called the move “Kafkaesque,” “unfathomable” and “bizarre.”
“This is a politically charged prosecution,” Safer said in court Wednesday.
An attorney for Floris, Mary Dohrmann, asked the court to strike the new complaint prosecutors attempted to file.
“Whether it’s incompetence, recklessness, your honor, or simply cruelty, it is inexcusable,” she said, adding that the maneuver “raises serious concerns about the credibility and accuracy” of the government’s allegations.
Borchert said Justice Department officials were acting in good faith and reasoned that they could add the charge without approval from a judge or a grand jury because they were not seeking to arrest Floris and Benavides.
“I’ll admit it’s rather novel in my experience also,” Borchert said. “I have not done this before.”
The post DOJ investigation into ex-FBI officials was viewed as witch hunt, agent says appeared first on Washington Post.
