Ex-FBI Officials Return to Court Over Hunter Biden Laptop Case

Two former FBI officials who led a unit monitoring foreign influence are due back in federal court in Washington on Tuesday, facing accusations they misled Congress about their knowledge of Hunter Biden's laptop. The Justice Department charged Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides in a criminal complaint announced last Friday, October 24.

The complaint alleges that Floris and Benavides falsely told lawmakers in 2023 that they did not have contemporaneous knowledge of the laptop or that they had not discussed it internally at the bureau. Prosecutors say the officials were leaders of the Foreign Influence Task Force, a unit established during the first Trump administration to police influence campaigns staged by Russia and other nations. The task force was disbanded in February 2025 by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The laptop in question was allegedly abandoned by Hunter Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019. The New York Post reported in 2020 that it had obtained a hard drive of the device from Rudy Giuliani, a close ally of President Donald Trump, and published emails that appeared to show some of Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings. Concerns about Russian involvement arose after the Trump administration's intelligence community assessed that Moscow was attempting to undermine Joe Biden's candidacy.

John Ratcliffe, who was then the national intelligence director, said there were no signs the laptop had anything to do with Russian actors. The FBI said it had nothing to add to Ratcliffe's statement. Hunter Biden was later investigated on gun and tax charges that resulted in felony convictions, and President Joe Biden pardoned his son in late 2024.

The case revisits an August 2020 briefing that Floris and Benavides, in their capacity as task force leaders, gave to Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson while the lawmakers were investigating Hunter Biden's work in Ukraine. News of that briefing leaked, and the senators said their efforts to scrutinize the Biden family had been discredited and falsely linked to Russian disinformation.

Defense lawyers are expected to challenge the case at Tuesday's preliminary hearing, including by pointing out that the officials were charged via a criminal complaint signed by a magistrate judge rather than an indictment returned by a grand jury. The Justice Department is thought to have repeatedly struggled in high-profile cases to persuade grand juries in Washington to return indictments. The lawyers for Floris and Benavides have denied the allegations of wrongdoing and have described the case as baseless and politically motivated.

The prosecution is a rare Justice Department criminal case against a former employee. It is part of a series of investigative actions the Justice Department has undertaken in the run-up to next week's midterm elections.