Two former senior FBI officials surrendered Friday on charges that they lied to Congress about their knowledge of and involvement in Hunter Biden investigations, including the bureau’s handling of his laptop.
Nikki Floris, 46, of Alexandria, Virginia, and Bradley Benavides, 56, of Aiken, South Carolina, each face a false-statements charge under federal law, the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington announced.
The criminal complaint concerns separate 2023 interviews with the House Judiciary Committee. Prosecutors say internal communications and witness accounts contradict the officials’ answers.
Floris led the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force as a deputy assistant director from mid-2019 through mid-2022. Benavides served as its section chief from mid-2019 through the 2020 election. The bureau has since dissolved the unit.
Messages contradict denials, prosecutors say
Floris denied discussing Hunter Biden at the task force, while Benavides said he learned that the FBI possessed the laptop from Wikipedia while preparing for his congressional interview, prosecutors said.
When an investigator asked whether she had any involvement in the Hunter Biden investigation, Floris answered, “I did not,” according to testimony reproduced in the affidavit. Her interview took place on July 19, 2023; Benavides’ followed on September 28, 2023.
Yet Benavides proposed laptop talking points for the FBI director’s call with U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia) on October 16, 2020, the affidavit says. Floris responded: “Looks good!”
The proposed language discussed the possibility of Russian disinformation but acknowledged that the FBI had not reached that conclusion about the laptop.
Both officials also approved an interim report for “Round River,” a project that examined Hunter Biden-related informant reporting as potential Russian disinformation, the affidavit alleges.
An FBI employee told investigators that he met with Benavides on October 22, 2020, and confirmed that the bureau held the laptop’s contents and that it belonged to Hunter Biden, according to the filing.
The Dallas Express previously reported on complaints from U.S. Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) that a 2020 FBI briefing undermined their Hunter Biden investigation by associating it with Russian disinformation.
NPR’s dismissal and later admission
The laptop story also exposed failures in news coverage. At a March 26, 2025, congressional hearing, U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) confronted NPR CEO Katherine Maher with an editor’s 2020 dismissal of the story as “pure distractions.” Maher agreed that NPR’s handling of the story had been a mistake.
Earlier in the same hearing, Maher told U.S. Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) that NPR acknowledged it was “mistaken in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner.”
CBS News’ own forensic review found no evidence of tampering in a copy of the laptop data in November 2022.
Defense calls case political
Floris’ lawyers denied wrongdoing and accused prosecutors of pursuing political advantage in a statement published Friday by Washington Litigation Group.
“Yet today, the DOJ has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts,” her attorneys said.
The charges remain allegations, and both defendants retain the presumption of innocence.
