FBI Laptop Case: Former Leaders Face Court on Perjury Charges

Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, two former FBI officials, returned to federal court in Washington on Tuesday to face charges of lying to Congress. The Department of Justice announced the prosecution of the former agents on Friday, marking a new legal front in the dispute over Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop.

The case centers on whether the officials minimized their knowledge of the device and their role in internal discussions about it. Floris and Benavides led the Foreign Influence Task Force, a unit created during the first Trump administration to monitor foreign influence campaigns. They briefed Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson in August 2020 while the lawmakers investigated Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine.

Defense attorneys plan to challenge the validity of the charges at the preliminary hearing. A key point of contention is the procedural method used to bring the case against the former agents. They were charged via a criminal complaint signed by a magistrate judge, rather than through an indictment voted on by a grand jury. This procedural choice stands out because the Justice Department has had difficulty persuading grand juries in the capital to return indictments in other high-profile matters.

The laptop in question was dropped off at a computer repair shop in Delaware in 2019. The New York Post obtained a hard drive from the device through Rudy Giuliani, a close ally of President Donald Trump. The newspaper reported on emails found on the computer that detailed Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings. The revelation occurred in the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign and fueled debate over the origins of the device.

Democrats and former intelligence officials raised concerns that Russian actors may have been involved in the laptop’s discovery. This suspicion grew because the Trump administration’s intelligence community had assessed that Moscow was working to undermine Joe Biden’s candidacy. President Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election and later pardoned his son in late 2024 after Hunter Biden was convicted on gun and tax charges.

At the time of the laptop’s discovery, John Ratcliffe served as the national intelligence director. He stated there were no signs the laptop had anything to do with Russian actors. The FBI added no further details to that assessment. Congressional Republicans have long criticized the Foreign Influence Task Force, arguing it attempted to discredit their investigations into the Biden family by linking their work to Russian disinformation.

The criminal complaint alleges that Floris and Benavides denied having contemporaneous knowledge of the laptop or participating in internal FBI conversations about it when they testified to lawmakers in 2023. Their lawyers have described the case as baseless and politically motivated. They have denied any allegations of wrongdoing regarding the former agents’ conduct.

The Foreign Influence Task Force was disbanded in February 2025 by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi. The prosecution of its former leaders is part of a series of investigative actions taken by the Justice Department in the weeks leading up to next month’s midterm elections. The case represents a rare criminal proceeding by the department against former employees for their statements to Congress.