Two Ex-FBI Officials Told Congress They Knew Nothing of Hunter's Laptop. A Judge Just Tossed Their Case.

Nikki Floris ran the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force during the 2020 election. Bradley Benavides was her section chief. In 2023, both told the House Judiciary Committee they knew next to nothing about Hunter Biden's laptop. Benavides said he learned of the criminal case tied to it from "the Wikipedia page."

On Monday, the day before the midterms, a federal magistrate judge in Washington threw out the criminal case against both of them. Judge Zia Faruqui ruled from the bench that prosecutors had not shown probable cause that either one knowingly lied. "What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization," he said, according to the AP, which had a reporter in the room.

The judge never said their answers were true. He said the government had not proved, at this early stage, that they knew they were false.

What the judge said

Faruqui spent about an hour on it. "There is no denying this investigation was rushed," he said, as The Hill reported. He called the case "slapdash" and said, "This does not feel like an investigation," according to the Daily Mail. Reuters reported he accused the Justice Department of "critical mistakes" and suggested the charges were timed for the election: "I will not bury my head in the sand and pretend I cannot read a calendar."

Fox News reported he called the case a "rush job" directed by President Trump and FBI Director Kash Patel. At last week's hearing, the FBI's case agent, Special Agent Bryan Witt, testified that the investigation began after a Trump election-security speech in July and that Patel ordered it and followed it closely, the Washington Examiner reported.

What the record shows

The charges came from Jeanine Pirro's U.S. Attorney's Office on Oct. 23. Four days later, prosecutors filed an FBI affidavit quoting the officials' own 2020 messages, as we reported. On Oct. 16, 2020, two days after the New York Post broke the laptop story, Benavides asked a colleague on the Hunter Biden case team when the laptop was seized. The answer: "12/9/2019." That same day he drafted a suggested answer for the FBI director's call with Sen. Mark Warner saying anyone reading the story "could be concerned this is a Russia disinformation effort." Floris replied: "Looks good!"

Faruqui refused to accept that filing as a new complaint because it came in after midnight without his signature, a misstep he hammered all week. The emails themselves stay on the public docket.

The judge

Magistrate judges are not nominated by a president. The district court's judges pick them for eight-year terms to handle warrants, first appearances and early hearings like this one. Faruqui is a former federal prosecutor.

He has drawn conservative fire before. In May, at a hearing for Cole Allen, the man charged with trying to assassinate President Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, Faruqui called it "extremely disturbing" that Allen had been put in five-point restraints, compared his treatment with that of Jan. 6 defendants and told him, "Mr. Allen, I'm sorry that things have not been the way they are supposed to," Fox News and ABC News reported.

The reaction

Sen. Ron Johnson, who says the FBI obstructed his own Senate investigation, didn't hold back.

"So holding Democrats and leftists accountable for weaponizing the FBI and DOJ against Republicans and obstructing my investigation is now considered weaponizing the government?" Johnson wrote. "How do you obtain justice in a judiciary populated by leftist judges?"

What's next

Tossing a complaint is not an acquittal. Prosecutors can still ask a grand jury to indict both officials, though D.C. grand juries have turned down several politically charged cases this year, the Washington Examiner noted.

The paper trail hasn't gone anywhere. For three years the official story from these two was that the laptop was something they read about later. A judge said that isn't enough to charge them. The emails say what they say.