President Trump did not need long to answer. Told on the tarmac in Palm Beach on Friday evening that two former FBI officials are facing felony charges tied to Hunter Biden, the President said: “Good.” Asked whether the FBI was protecting the Bidens before the 2020 election, he went further. “They’re crooked people. You know what they are? Dirty cops — like Comey. Comey’s a dirty cop.”
The two are Nikki Floris, 46, of Alexandria, Virginia, and Bradley Benavides, 56, of Aiken, South Carolina. Both surrendered Friday morning on arrest warrants after a criminal complaint charged each with one count of making false statements to Congress, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced.
Floris ran the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force as a Deputy Assistant Director from mid-2019 to mid-2022, and Benavides was its Section Chief through the 2020 election. In 2023, both told the House Judiciary Committee the task force had no role in the Hunter Biden investigations. Floris said she was involved in no discussions about Hunter Biden. Benavides said he only learned the FBI had Hunter Biden’s laptop from reading a Wikipedia article in 2023.
Prosecutors say the evidence tells a different story. According to the Justice Department, Floris routinely discussed the FBI’s Hunter Biden investigations for more than a year, and Benavides regularly discussed the laptop with FBI officials in the run-up to the 2020 election. Both had been warned that lying to Congress is a crime.
“One of these individuals is on record privately claiming to be ‘running a shadow government’ during the 2020 election,” said FBI Director Kash Patel. “Weaponization will never be tolerated at this FBI.” The task force was disbanded in 2025, and the two are due back in court Tuesday. Under President Trump, the people who rigged the system are finally being held to account.
