Monday 2 November 2026
A federal judge throws out the case against two former FBI officials and calls the prosecution weaponization
A federal magistrate judge in Washington on Monday dismissed the criminal complaint against two former senior FBI officials accused of lying to Congress about the bureau's handling of the Hunter Biden investigations. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui found prosecutors had not shown probable cause that Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides knowingly made false statements in their 2023 testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, and he said some of the statements at issue were not false at all. He called what happened in the case weaponization of federal law enforcement and criticized the Justice Department for a rushed investigation, brought by complaint rather than grand jury indictment, in the days before the midterm elections. The department said it disagrees with the ruling and is evaluating all options, and it can still take the case to a grand jury.
Floris and Benavides were senior counterintelligence officials at the FBI's Washington field office. The complaint accused each of one count of making a false statement, based on testimony they gave the House Judiciary Committee in 2023 about their knowledge of and involvement in investigations touching Hunter Biden, including material from the laptop he left at a Delaware repair shop in 2019, which surfaced ahead of the 2020 election.
Faruqui dismantled the complaint piece by piece at a hearing on Monday. Several of the alleged false statements were not false, he found, and the rest lacked evidence that the two officials intended to deceive anyone. “Without motive, without direct motive, I have nothing” to support a finding of probable cause, he said. He faulted the way the case was built and brought: prosecutors filed a criminal complaint, the route normally used when someone must be taken into custody at once, instead of presenting the case to a grand jury, and the investigation made what he called critical mistakes and departed from normal procedures. An FBI agent who worked the case testified that he had been concerned the investigation would be seen as political, and other reporting placed the case's start at the direction of FBI Director Kash Patel. “What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization” of federal law enforcement, Faruqui said. “I am deeply troubled by what has happened in this case.” He noted the timing directly, saying he would not lobotomize himself to the fact that the charges landed days before Tuesday's elections. Dozens of former FBI officials sat in the courtroom, among them former acting director Brian Driscoll.
The dismissal is without prejudice, which means the case is over in its current form but not necessarily finished. A Justice Department spokesperson said the department disagrees with the ruling and is evaluating all options to respond. Prosecutors can present the same allegations to a grand jury and seek an indictment. Whether they do will say as much about the department's reading of the judge's findings as the findings themselves: the problem Faruqui identified was not a missing form but missing evidence of a knowing lie.
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