Two former FBI officials have been charged with allegedly lying to Congress about their involvement in the investigation into Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the November 3 midterm elections .
“Yet today, the DOJ has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts,” her attorneys said in a statement. “It’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election.”
This is a rare case. The Department of Justice has charged a former employee with a crime, and this does not happen often. It also comes as FBI Director Kash Patel looks into big events from the FBI’s recent past. Before he became FBI chief, Patel was a strong critic of the agency. These events have kept President Donald Trump’s conservative supporters upset for years.
Floris’ attorneys called her “a patriot” and said she has “served our nation as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years.”
Yet, the complaint says, both played down what they knew first-hand about the laptop, or their role in the probes, when they gave testimony to Congress in 2023. He set a preliminary hearing for next Tuesday, even though prosecutors wanted more time. It also accuses Benavides of making a false statement by telling lawmakers that he learned through Wikipedia that the FBI had the laptop. “Lying to Congress by senior FBI officials strikes at the heart of our system.
US Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said it is “rare that we have charges this old coming in this nature. The judge described the situation as a “sword of Damocles” hanging over the defendants’ heads. The complaint says Floris and Benavides led the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) and were involved in the Hunter Biden investigations. It says Biden was a repeat subject at FITF meetings. No one is above the law,” Patel said.
