Two former senior FBI officials were taken into custody Friday on charges of lying to Congress about their involvement in investigations into Hunter Biden, FBI Director Kash Patel announced. The charges stem from an ongoing investigation into the bureau’s since-dissolved Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) and whether FBI investigators sought to minimize allegations of Biden family corruption and evidence from Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The officials are Nikki Cole Floris and Bradley Benavides. Floris served as the FITF’s deputy assistant director from mid-2019 through mid-2022, while Benavides served as its section chief from mid-2019 through the 2020 election. Patel said both testified that the task force was not involved in the Hunter Biden investigations, but documentary evidence, contemporaneous communications and witness accounts contradict their testimony.
Patel also said Floris privately claimed to be “running a shadow government” through her role on the FITF during the 2020 election. The two defendants appeared in federal district court in Washington, D.C., Friday morning and were released pending trial. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Tuesday morning.
The charges follow years of Republican allegations that the FBI sought to minimize evidence of Biden family corruption and slow-walked its investigation into Hunter Biden while Joe Biden was president. Hunter Biden was ultimately convicted of federal tax and gun charges before receiving a pardon from his father around Thanksgiving in 2024.
