Ex-FBI "Shadow Government" Official Among Two Charged With Lying To Congress Over Hunter Biden Laptop
Two former senior FBI officials who ran the bureau's now-defunct Foreign Influence Task Force during the 2020 election were charged Friday with lying to Congress about their roles in the FBI's Hunter Biden investigations.
Nikki Cole Floris, 46, and Bradley Benavides, 56, each face one count of lying to Congress in a criminal complaint, D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced in a post on X. Both surrendered Friday and made their first appearance in federal court in Washington, according to the AP.
Floris led the task force as a deputy assistant director from mid-2019 through mid-2022, while Benavides was its section chief through the 2020 election, FBI Director Kash Patel said. Both testified that the FITF was not involved in the Hunter Biden investigations. "Documentary evidence, contemporaneous communications, and witness accounts contradict their testimony," Patel wrote, crediting the bureau's Kansas City field office alongside the Justice Department and Pirro.
Two former senior FBI officials, Nikki Cole Floris and Bradley Benavides, were taken into custody today on charges of allegedly lying to Congress about their involvement in the FBI's investigations into Hunter Biden. The charges stem from an ongoing investigation into the since-dissolved FBI Foreign Influence Task Force. Floris led the FITF as a Deputy Assistant Director from mid-2019 through mid-2022. Benavides was the FITF Section Chief from mid-2019 through the 2020 election. Both testified that the FITF was not involved in the Hunter Biden investigations. Documentary evidence, contemporaneous communications, and witness accounts contradict their testimony. Floris is also on record privately claiming to be "running a shadow government" during the 2020 election in her role on the FITF. Lying to Congress by senior FBI officials strikes at the heart of our system. No one is above the law. The FBI has already dismantled the corrupt CR-15 squad that engaged in political weaponization targeting their opponents, including President Trump. Thanks to @TheJusticeDept @FBIKansasCity and @USAttyPirro . -DKP
— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) October 23, 2026
Benavides told Congress he learned about the laptop story from Wikipedia, but the Justice Department says it has evidence he discussed it with others inside the FBI, Fox News reports. Prosecutors also say Floris discussed Hunter Biden with members of the task force despite testifying otherwise. Pirro said the evidence showed "their involvement in helping shape the public narrative about Hunter Biden's laptop right before the election."
Floris' lawyers called her "a patriot" who served as an FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years and said the Justice Department accused her "on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts." "It's no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election," they said in a statement. Benavides has not publicly commented.
The case lands less than two weeks before the Nov. 3 midterms, the latest in a series of politically charged Justice Department actions in the run-up to the vote, the AP noted.
What The Task Force Knew
Christopher Wray set up the task force in 2017 to counter foreign influence operations, and it served as the bureau's line to social media companies ahead of the 2020 election. The task force knew the laptop was real when the New York Post began publishing its contents in October 2020, Laura Dehmlow, then the FITF's section chief, told House Judiciary investigators in July 2023, the Free Beacon reported.
The FBI nonetheless refused to answer social media companies' questions about the laptop, including from a Twitter employee who asked task force representatives about its authenticity at a previously scheduled meeting the day the Post story ran, according to the committee.
Benavides also crossed paths with the two Republican senators then digging into the Biden family's foreign money. On Aug. 6, 2020, he briefed Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson in a session that, according to a June 2023 letter from House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, hampered their investigation into Hunter Biden's financial connections. Grassley called the briefing "unnecessary and completely irrelevant to the substance of our investigation." Jordan's letter asked Benavides, by then a senior risk manager at Amazon, to sit for a transcribed interview.
The Shadow Government Line
Patel's post also invoked a private message Floris sent during an unrelated episode. Floris wrote she was "basically running a shadow government" in September 2020, as the bureau recalled a report alleging Chinese election interference, according to FBI messages declassified in July and reported by the Washington Examiner.
Wray named Floris in 2022 to run the Washington Field Office's intelligence division, and Patel forced her out of the FBI in May 2025, the Examiner reported. Attorney General Pam Bondi had already disbanded the task force in February 2025, one of her first acts in office.
The CR-15 squad Patel cited at the end of his post was a Washington Field Office public corruption unit that worked Arctic Frost, the probe that fed into Jack Smith's election case against Trump. Patel abolished it last October after disclosures that Arctic Frost had tracked Republican senators' phone records.
The alleged lies date to 2023, according to Patel, which keeps them inside the five-year statute of limitations that generally governs federal false-statement charges until 2028. Anything the pair did during the 2020 campaign itself fell outside that window last fall.