Judge strikes the new complaint
A federal magistrate judge on Tuesday dismissed a new charge against two former FBI officials accused of lying to Congress. According to NBC News, Judge Zia M. Faruqui found that the Justice Department took novel and improper steps in announcing the allegation.
Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides were first charged last week with making false statements to Congress about what they knew regarding an investigation of Hunter Biden's laptop. Government attorneys then added an obstruction charge in a superseding criminal complaint filed overnight. That document had not been signed by any law enforcement officer or judge.
Faruqui said prosecutors had created "their own category of charging." He asked why the department had not followed what it has done in "every other case in the history of this district," and he denied a request to let the complaint be signed during the hearing.
What the prosecutor and judge said in court
John Borchert of the U.S. attorney's office for Washington acknowledged in court that "this has never been done before." He suggested the complaint could be signed at the hearing. Faruqui declined and struck the filing.
The judge said he did not doubt that the prosecution acted in good faith. But he said he was concerned that "this system is being misused by people of higher levels." He also remarked that "everything is a sideshow on top of a sideshow" in the case.
Before the ruling, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington, told reporters it was up to the judge whether to sign the new complaint. She noted that a prior complaint had been signed by another judge and said prosecutors had the ability to add a charge. "If the judge doesn't want to add the charge, that's up to the judge," she said.
Defense says the case is political
Mary Dohrmann, Floris' lawyer, said there was mounting evidence that the case was a "political football," not one about "the law or the facts." Floris' legal team has said the prosecution was brought to "score political points."
In a statement Tuesday, her attorneys called the latest filing "outrageous government conduct against a decorated public servant." They said the government filed an unsigned and unsworn complaint in the middle of the night to fix problems with the original charge and add a new one that was "just as meritless as the first one." They added that in their combined decades of DOJ service they had never seen anything like it.
According to NBC News, Floris and Benavides have been targets of sharp criticism from allies of President Donald Trump. Both were involved with election security issues around the 2020 contest, which Trump falsely claims was rigged. After their arrests, Trump said, "I heard they were bad people."
FBI agent describes how the probe began
After the new complaint was struck, the hearing on the original complaint continued. FBI Special Agent Bryan Witt testified that the investigation began after FBI Director Kash Patel sent a letter directing the Kansas City, Missouri, office to look into certain people, including Floris.
Witt said he considered the assignment a "huge distraction" from a major public corruption case he was working. "I had concerns that this would be viewed as political," he testified. He said the investigation was "prioritized" and that agents were "told to work it aggressively."
Asked who was pushing him, Witt said there were check-ins from high-level officials, including Patel and an FBI deputy director. Asked whether Patel pressed him, he said he did not. The hearing is scheduled to continue Wednesday.
