A former senior FBI official charged with lying to Congress about the Hunter Biden investigations accused U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office on Tuesday of a bad-faith, after-midnight filing meant to undercut a court hearing on whether the case should proceed.
Lawyers for Nikki Floris asked a federal judge in Washington to strike a “superseding criminal complaint” that prosecutors filed shortly after midnight, hours before a preliminary hearing at which the government had to show probable cause.
“Nor can the government unilaterally reset the procedural clock, frustrate Defendants’ opportunity to challenge probable cause, or derail an orderly judicial proceeding simply by placing new accusations on the docket in the dead of night,” the motion states.
Floris, a 20-year FBI veteran, and Bradley Benavides were leaders of the bureau’s now-dissolved Foreign Influence Task Force. Both were charged last week with lying to Congress. Prosecutors allege the pair falsely testified that the task force was not involved in the Hunter Biden investigations, and that Benavides falsely told House Judiciary Committee staff in 2023 that he had not discussed the FBI’s possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop with anyone in the bureau’s Criminal Division.
FBI Director Kash Patel has said documentary evidence, communications and witness accounts contradict their testimony. He also alleged that Floris privately described “running a shadow government” during the 2020 election.
The new filing replaced the FBI agent attesting to the allegations, added a felony obstruction charge and softened several key claims. Floris went from taking part in “scores of conversations” to taking part in “conversations.” She and Benavides went from being “at the center” of the task force’s dealings to being “involved in” them.
Floris’ lawyers said the new document is unsigned, unsworn and unapproved by any judge, making it “in essence, a nullity.” They said the added obstruction count requires “indictment by a grand jury in order to be sustained,” and they accused prosecutors of using the public docket to “generate publicity” and push “mere political narrative.”
“The government’s last-ditch filing before the pre-scheduled preliminary hearing in this case is not merely procedurally improper and substantively deficient,” the lawyers wrote. “It represents a serious abuse of the criminal charging process.”
They argued the timing “strongly supports an inference of bad faith” and suggested the government “cannot establish probable cause.”
The charges came 10 days before the Nov. 3 midterms. Floris’ attorneys have said they do not believe the timing is a coincidence. The two officials have faced Republican criticism since 2020, when they briefed two GOP senators about Russian disinformation targeting the Biden family.
The preliminary hearing was set for 11 a.m. Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui, who had already refused prosecutors’ request for a further delay.