Ex-FBI Official Swore He Learned of Hunter Biden's Laptop From Wikipedia. His 2020 Messages Asked When the FBI Seized It

Bradley Benavides told Congress in 2023 that he only knew the FBI had Hunter Biden's laptop because he read about it on Wikipedia two days before his interview. A new FBI affidavit, filed by the Justice Department hours before his court hearing Tuesday, quotes the messages he sent in October 2020.

"Per chance, could you shoot me the date on the property receipt re the laptop...when was that seized?" Benavides wrote to an assistant special agent in charge on the Hunter Biden case team on Oct. 16, 2020. The answer came back: "12/9/2019."

The filing also adds a new charge. Benavides and Nicole Floris, who ran the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force during the 2020 election, were already charged with lying to Congress. Prosecutors now also accuse both of obstructing a congressional proceeding, a separate felony under 18 U.S.C. § 1505 (court filing).

The talking point

Two days after the New York Post broke the laptop story, the FBI director was set to speak with Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. The draft talking points from the bureau's congressional affairs office said only that the FBI had "an item that we lawfully seized."

Benavides wanted more. "This is good...you could add another if asked," he wrote, and proposed the question: "Is the information we're seeing in the press about a laptop containing emails associated with Hunter Biden part of a Russia disinformation effort?" His suggested answer said anyone reading the story "could be concerned this is a Russia disinformation effort," while adding that the FBI had not made that determination.

"Nikki, thoughts???" he asked. Floris wrote back: "Looks good!"

By then, according to the affidavit, the FBI had held the laptop for 10 months. Baltimore agents got it from the repair shop on Dec. 9, 2019, and searched it as part of their tax and money-laundering case against Hunter Biden, whom the bureau code-named "Sportsman."

What they told Congress

In 2023, both sat for transcribed interviews with the House Judiciary Committee after being warned that lying to Congress is a crime. Asked when he learned of a criminal investigation tied to the laptop, Benavides answered, "The Wikipedia page." Asked whether he knew from his FBI job that the bureau had taken the laptop, he said: "Absolutely not."

He also testified that he had no conversations with anyone in the FBI's Criminal Division about the laptop. The affidavit says that on Oct. 22, 2020, he sent a Criminal Division unit chief a meeting invitation titled "To Discuss Laptop," and the two met at FBI headquarters, where Criminal Division personnel confirmed the laptop was Hunter Biden's.

Floris told the committee, "I don't have any knowledge of said laptop." Asked whether Hunter Biden was ever discussed at the task force while she ran it, she agreed she had "no personal knowledge" of it. The affidavit lists her messages about "Sportsman" running into September 2021, including "i have a sportsman update from CID."

Why obstruction now

At the first court appearance on Oct. 23, Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui questioned the unusual way the case was charged. To win, prosecutors must show the false answers actually mattered to Congress's investigation. The new affidavit goes straight at that.

A congressional staffer who oversaw the 2023 interviews told the FBI the committee relied on those answers, and that they "influenced the Committee's investigation significantly, including by thwarting investigative follow-up interviews and subpoenas." Had Floris told the truth, the staffer said, "the Committee would have pursued all relevant information about those communications."

The filing also describes "Round River," a task-force project that both officials signed off on in September 2020. An internal email setting up a meeting on it said the team was "brainstorming on how we can utilize the network to send information of our choosing back upstream." Floris replied that she was "[l]ooking forward to the conversation!"

What's next

Both were due before Faruqui on Tuesday for a preliminary hearing on probable cause. They have not been indicted by a grand jury, and their lawyers say the charges are political and that they will fight them. Our first report covers the original charges and the 2020 Grassley-Johnson briefing.

For three years, the official line from these two was that the laptop was something they read about later. Their own emails, now on the court docket, show them drafting how the FBI director should talk about it in real time.