A federal judge criticized the Department of Justice's unconventional handling of a criminal case on Tuesday. The case accused two former FBI officials of making false statements to Congress regarding their knowledge of a laptop that the Department of Justice claimed belonged to Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden.
U.S. Magistrate Cia Farouki removed a revised criminal complaint submitted by the Department of Justice in the late night from the case files. The document added an obstruction of justice charge against two former officials, Nicky Flores and Bradley Benavides. Such prosecution documents require a judge's signature to confirm a reasonable belief that the defendants committed a crime, but this complaint did not receive such a signature.
Farouki said, 'It is not the practice of this court – and I believe it should not be – to include complaints without signatures in the case files.'
He then added, "I want to know why the U.S. government is so hesitant or resistant to accepting a legitimate and reasonable basis that you must believe in. Why have you changed the entire historical practice of prosecuting cases in this particular case today?"
This supplementary complaint was dismissed, representing an embarrassing setback for the Department of Justice. The department launched a series of high-profile and politically charged investigative actions ahead of next week's mid-term elections. However, while Farouki continued to advance the preliminary hearings on Tuesday, the original case of false statements announced on Friday remains in effect, at least for the time being.
The case alleges that officials downplayed the information they were aware of.
The case accuses these two former officials of falsely downplaying their knowledge of a laptop. The Department of Justice stated that Hunter Biden left this laptop at a computer repair shop in 2019.
In addition, this case is also a direct attack by the Trump administration on a disbanded FBI special task force, which was originally responsible for monitoring foreign influence. Republicans in Congress have long criticized this task force, claiming that it attempted to smear their own investigations into the Biden family.
The defense attorney was scheduled to challenge this case at the preliminary hearing in the Washington federal court on Tuesday, which included highlighting an unusual fact: these two former FBI officials were prosecuted through a criminal complaint signed by a magistrate, rather than an indictment passed by a grand jury. In high-profile cases in Washington D.C., the Department of Justice has repeatedly struggled to persuade grand juries to return an indictment.
Hours before the hearing, the Department of Justice added a new obstruction of justice charge, claiming that the alleged false statements by these two former officials allowed them to avoid being questioned about their knowledge of Hunter Biden and obstructed an investigation into the Biden family that was underway by members of the House of Representatives.
Earlier on Tuesday, Flores' lawyer stated in a statement, "What exactly is the United States Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C. doing?" They said, "In the dead of night, the government submitted a complaint that was neither signed nor sworn, attempting to fix the issues with the original charges against Ms. Flores and adding a new charge that is just as unfounded as the first one."
Lawyers stated, "In our combined decades of experience working at the Ministry of Justice, we have never seen, nor even heard of, such a document being submitted."
This is an extremely complex story.
This lawsuit is a rare criminal case filed by the Department of Justice against a former employee, taking us back to a complex past. In the last weeks of the 2020 election campaign, The New York Post revealed the existence of a laptop that, according to the newspaper, was left by Joe Biden at a computer repair shop in Delaware about a year prior.
The New York Post stated that it obtained the hard drive from Rudy Giuliani, a close ally of President Donald Trump, and reported on some of the contents of the laptop, including emails that appeared to show Hunter Biden's overseas business dealings.
The suspicious circumstances surrounding the discovery of this laptop have raised concerns among Democrats and former intelligence officials about possible Russian involvement, especially at a time when Trump's own intelligence community assessed that Moscow was attempting to undermine the campaign of Democratic candidate Joe Biden, who later defeated Trump in 2020. Meanwhile, Giuliani also went abroad in search of negative information about Biden's family.
However, Trump's then Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, quickly tried to dispel speculation about the origin of this laptop, stating that there were no indications that it was related to Russian agents. FBI indicates that there were no additional statements beyond Ratcliffe's claims, and Joe Biden was later investigated for gun and tax allegations, which led to a felony conviction in related cases. President Joe Biden pardoned his son at the end of 2024.
The defendant once led a special working group on foreign influence.
The officials under review, FBI Flores and Benavides, were once the heads of a special task force focused on foreign influence. This task force was established during Trump's first administration and was responsible for combating influence operations initiated by Russia and other countries, which aimed to create divisions, undermine democracy, and spread misinformation.
Under this responsibility, FBI officials briefed Republican senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson in August 2020, at a time when the two senators were investigating Hunter Biden's activities in Ukraine. The content of the briefing was later leaked, and the senators immediately criticized FBI, claiming that their efforts to investigate the Biden family were smeared and wrongly linked to Russian disinformation.
Criminal complaints allege that they lied to members of Congress in 2023, denying knowledge of Biden's laptop at the time, or participation in any internal discussions regarding this matter within FBI. Their lawyers deny any allegations of improper conduct.
The working group was disbanded in February 2025 by then-Justice Minister Pam Bondi.
