DOJ adds obstruction charge in case against two former FBI officials

The Department of Justice added an obstruction of congressional proceedings charge to the case against two former senior FBI officials on Tuesday. The new count was filed just hours before a scheduled hearing in federal district court in Washington, D.C., where the pair faces allegations of lying to lawmakers.

Nikki Floris, a former deputy assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division, and Bradley Benavides, a former senior counterintelligence official, were initially charged on Friday. Prosecutors accused them of making false statements to Congress regarding the bureau's investigation into the laptop of Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden.

The original complaint alleged that Floris and Benavides knowingly lied to congressional investigators on two separate occasions. According to court documents, Floris made false statements on July 19, 2023, while Benavides did so on September 28, 2023.

The government claims the pair aimed to minimize or conceal the FBI Foreign Influence Task Force's engagement in the Hunter Biden probe. The affidavit states that the goal was to impede the congressional investigation into whether investigators sought to suppress or discredit material found on the laptop. That material included embarrassing photos and videos.

Court records filed Tuesday describe how the charges are based on witness accounts and documents from conduct dating back to 2020. The affidavit alleges that both congressional and FBI witnesses, along with internal FBI documents, prove the pair were aware of the Hunter Biden investigation.

Attorneys for the former agents criticized the timing and method of the new filing. They stated that the government's last-ditch filing before the pre-scheduled preliminary hearing was procedurally improper and substantively deficient.

"It represents a serious abuse of the criminal charging process, a troubling disregard for the judicial safeguards governing the initiation of criminal proceedings, and a calculated effort to evade judicial scrutiny," Floris' attorneys said in a statement. They argued the filing shielded the government's allegations from adversarial testing at the scheduled hearing.

The defense questioned why prosecutors chose to charge the pair through a criminal complaint rather than an indictment. An indictment would have required approval by a grand jury instead of a magistrate judge. The attorneys noted that the public lodging of criminal charges must usually be authorized by a grand jury, a judge, or the defendant herself.

"What is going on at the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office?" Floris' attorneys asked in their statement. "In the middle of the night, the government filed an unsigned and unsworn complaint attempting to fix the issues with their original charge against Ms. Floris and adding a new charge just as meritless as the first one."

U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui appeared skeptical of the initial charges when they were filed on Friday. She described the facts as "old" and noted that "rare charges" that are "this old" are never charged by complaint. The judge set the Tuesday hearing to consider whether the government established probable cause in its complaint.

Ron Safer, an attorney for Benavides, told reporters that the government should be able to offer evidence "today" against two "dedicated public servants." Both former agents deny all charges brought against them.