Judge finds 'nothing' to support the charges
A federal magistrate judge on Monday dismissed a criminal complaint charging two former senior FBI counterintelligence officials with lying to Congress about their roles in the bureau's Hunter Biden investigation, CBS News reported. Judge Zia Faruqui delivered an hour-long oral ruling that criticized both the Justice Department and the FBI.
Faruqui called the case "slapdash" and said there was no probable cause to believe Nikki Floris or Bradley Benavides had committed a crime. "Without motive, without direct evidence, I have nothing," he said. "It's not close. It's nothing." He added that what happened in the case "can't be described as anything other than weaponization."
Floris was a former top intelligence analyst in charge at the FBI's Washington Field Office. Benavides was a former deputy assistant director in the Counterintelligence Division. After the ruling, the two embraced outside the courtroom, and Floris cried tears of relief, CBS News reported. Former Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll and Steve Jensen, a former head of the Washington Field Office, were among those who came to support them.
An unusual prosecution
The case rested on testimony Floris and Benavides gave the House Judiciary Committee in July and September 2023. It focused on an FBI Foreign Influence Task Force operation known as "Round River." Prosecutors said the operation involved collecting "derogatory informant reporting on, among other things, Hunter Biden, to flag the reporting as Russian disinformation." According to the complaint, Floris was the task force's deputy assistant director and Benavides its section chief. They had briefed Sens. Charles Grassley and Ron Johnson in August 2020, which ultimately led the House committee to summon them.
The procedure was also out of the ordinary. Prosecutors used a criminal complaint, a charging document generally reserved for felony cases involving urgent public safety or national security threats. Prosecutors usually obtain a grand jury indictment first. After midnight before the hearing began last Tuesday, they filed an unsigned, unsworn superseding complaint seeking to add obstruction-of-Congress charges. Faruqui called that maneuver improper and unheard of and struck it from the record, but he let the hearing on the original complaint go forward over three days of testimony.
Testimony exposed gaps in the evidence
FBI Special Agent Bryan Witt, who helped investigate, acknowledged that the case had not been handled like any other in his career. He testified that it was opened at the behest of FBI Director Kash Patel one day after President Donald Trump gave a televised speech in July. In that speech, Trump accused intelligence officials of a coverup involving China's interference in the 2020 election and ordered the Justice Department to pursue prosecutions. Witt said senior officials, including Patel, checked on its progress. He also said he feared it might be seen as political and that others in his Kansas City field office worried it was a witch hunt.
To show probable cause in a false-statements case, prosecutors must show that statements were false, knowingly and willfully made, and material. Faruqui went through each element and found the government fell short on all three. He contrasted the complaint with past cases that met those standards, including those against Michael Flynn and Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Witt acknowledged that the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee had not allowed agents to interview staffers who were present for the testimony, a key step for establishing materiality. He was allowed to speak only with Steve Castor, the committee Republicans' general counsel, who said he had neither witnessed Benavides' testimony nor reviewed the transcript. Witt did not speak with anyone for the committee's Democrats. A recorded call released to the defense captured Carlton Davis, a special counsel to U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, acknowledging the problem, according to the report.
Timing, reaction and what comes next
Faruqui, a former federal prosecutor, read aloud from the Justice Department Manual, which says prosecutors should not take overt steps intended to affect an election's outcome. "Why did this have to be charged in October 2026?" he asked, noting that no statute-of-limitations deadline was near. "There was simply no other event on the calendar, except for the midterm elections," he said. He also said, "It's clear to me the rushed investigation had a goal. It was a rush to charge — and that is a problem."
He warned of collateral damage, saying the case was practically "marketing material" for discouraging people from joining the FBI and could have a "chilling effect" on Congress' ability to take testimony.
Margaret Donovan, one of Floris' attorneys, said the case "should have never been brought." CBS News said it had asked the Justice Department, the FBI and the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office for comment. Although the complaint was dismissed, the Justice Department could appeal to the chief judge or seek a grand jury indictment.
