Two ex-FBI officials who steered the bureau’s response to Hunter Biden’s laptop face charges for lying to Congress about their involvement, federal prosecutors announced Friday.
Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, once senior figures on the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, self-surrendered after federal authorities charged them with lying to Congress about their roles in Hunter Biden investigations. DC U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and FBI Director Kash Patel announced the arrest and charges in Washington.
The case turns on sworn testimony the pair gave the House Judiciary Committee in 2023. Both claimed little or no involvement with the Hunter Biden laptop probes. An affidavit filed in DC federal court lays out briefings, emails, instant messages, and meetings that prosecutors say show the opposite.
The New York Post reported the charges stem from a probe into their work on the Foreign Influence Task Force, known as the FITF, during the 2020 election cycle.
Pirro described the core allegation in plain terms. One of the defendants claimed to have learned about the matter from Wikipedia, she said, even as evidence showed both helped shape the public narrative about the laptop right before Election Day.
Pirro stated:
"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."
Patel filled in the leadership timeline. Floris led the FITF as a deputy assistant director from mid-2019 through mid-2022. Benavides served as FITF section chief from mid-2019 through the 2020 election. Both told Congress the task force stayed out of the Hunter Biden investigations. Patel said the documents and witnesses tell a different story.
Patel said:
"Both testified that the FITF was not involved in the Hunter Biden investigations. Documentary evidence, contemporaneous communications, and witness accounts contradict their testimony."
He added that Floris is on record privately claiming she was “running a shadow government” during the 2020 election in her FITF role.
Floris sat for a transcribed interview with the House Judiciary Committee on July 19, 2023. Asked whether she had any involvement in the Hunter Biden investigation, she answered, “I did not.”
Pressed on whether the FITF discussed Hunter Biden, she said she personally had no such conversations. On the laptop itself she stated she had no knowledge of it.
Benavides faced committee members on Sept. 28, 2023. Asked if he had any knowledge during his tenure of an investigation into Hunter Biden’s laptop, he answered, “No.” He went further, saying he would not have discussed the laptop inside government and that knowledge of FBI possession of it would have sat outside the FITF’s lane.
A source familiar with the charges said the case grew directly from those 2023 interviews.
The FBI seized Hunter Biden’s personal computer in December 2019. On Oct. 14, 2020, the Post published its story on the laptop emails. In the days that followed, both Floris and Benavides helped handle the bureau’s response to press inquiries.
Internal messages and emails cited in the affidavit show Floris discussing coverage of Hunter Biden and the laptop frequently in the run-up to the election, treating it as a possible Russian disinformation effort.
On Oct. 16, 2020, Benavides sent an email on a chain that included Floris. He wrote that consumers of the story might worry it was a Russia disinformation effort similar to warnings from the FBI, ODNI, and other agencies. He added that the FBI had not made that determination in this specific instance and that he would not comment on investigations.
Benavides then asked, “Nikki, thoughts???” Floris replied, “Looks good!”
That exchange sits at the center of the government’s claim: the two were not distant bystanders. They were clearing language and managing the public line on the laptop story in real time.
In an October 2026 interview with federal investigators, a current FBI employee said both Benavides and Floris belonged to a working group called “Round River.” The group, the employee said, “focused in large part on the Hunter Biden investigations and the potential for Russian disinformation.”
The same employee accused the pair of concealing from Congress their relationships with federal investigators and prosecutors close to the Hunter Biden probes.
Prosecutors treat that account as further proof the 2023 testimony was false. The pair had told lawmakers the FITF stayed clear. The working-group description and the email traffic put them inside the conversation.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, tied the case to a broader pattern of accountability for senior figures involved in actions that harmed Donald Trump’s campaigns and presidency.
Fitton said:
"These are the most senior figures to date who are being charged in the lawfare schemes against Trump, aside from James Comey."
The charging documents do not list every statute or docket number in the public summary. What they do show is a clear arc: leadership posts on the foreign-influence task force, active management of the laptop narrative in October 2020, flat denials under oath in 2023, and now federal charges in 2026.
Floris and Benavides held the levers on a unit built to police foreign meddling. When the laptop story broke, they helped craft the bureau’s public posture. When Congress later asked what they knew, they said almost nothing. The affidavit, the emails, the “Looks good!” reply, and the Round River account are the government’s answer to those denials.
Taxpayers fund the FBI to follow facts, not to manage political fallout. When senior officials shape a narrative before an election and then tell Congress they were barely involved, the public is entitled to a full accounting. These charges are the start of that process, not the end of it.
