Former FBI Officials Charged With Lying To Congress About Hunter Biden Probes
Two former FBI officials have been charged with lying to Congress about their roles in the agency’s Hunter Biden probes, federal authorities announced Friday.
“Lying to Congress by anyone strikes at the heart of our democratic system but when senior FBI agents lie to Congress believing they are above the law, it’s time to bring the hammer of justice down on them,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said in a statement announcing the indictment. “When senior officials entrusted with safeguarding our nation’s security choose deception over duty, they undermine the very institutions they swore to uphold. Today’s action makes clear that no one is above the law, and we will hold accountable all who obstruct the truth.”
According to FBI Director Kash Patel, federal authorities took former FBI officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides into custody on Friday morning. Both have been charged for allegedly lying to Congress in 2023 about their roles in the FBI’s since-dissolved Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF).
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, revealed in October 2023 how the task force “used a sham assessment opened by FBI headquarters to cull reporting from confidential human sources (CHS) throughout the country related to the Biden family and then falsely brand the intelligence as ‘foreign disinformation,’” as The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland reported. The news came a year after Grassley revealed whistleblower allegations that the Christopher Wray-led FBI “developed information in 2020 about Hunter Biden’s criminal financial and related activity but ultimately shut it down based on false assertions that it was subject to foreign disinformation.”
Floris — who once bragged about “running a shadow government across the FBI” — served as the FITF’s deputy assistant director from mid-2019 through mid-2022, according to Patel. Benavides was the task force’s section chief from mid-2019 through the 2020 election. (Read more from “Former FBI Officials Charged With Lying To Congress About Hunter Biden Probes” HERE)
