Photo: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File
Defense lawyers on Thursday urged a federal judge to dismiss a criminal complaint charging two former FBI counterintelligence officials with making false statements to Congress about Hunter Biden, calling it an overtly political prosecution aimed at placating President Donald Trump, according to the Associated Press.
The arguments capped a days-long hearing in which lawyers for the former officials, Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, sought to portray the case as legally defective and tainted by politics. The case is one of a series of high-profile Justice Department actions ahead of next week’s midterm elections. Testimony at the hearing indicated that the investigation was ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel and opened shortly after a primetime election security speech by Trump.
“A political prosecution is always going to make for a shaky foundation for a criminal case,” said Mary Dohrmann, a lawyer for Floris. Floris and Benavides are accused of falsely downplaying their knowledge of a laptop that the Justice Department says Hunter Biden dropped off at a computer repair shop in 2019, which was publicized a year later in the final weeks of the presidential race.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui did not immediately rule. A dismissal would not stop the Justice Department from seeking an indictment, though that could be difficult given that grand juries in Washington have repeatedly refused to approve charges in politically sensitive cases. Even if the judge sustains the complaint, prosecutors would presumably still need a grand jury indictment for the case to move forward.
The alleged false statements were made in 2023 before the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee, which was conducting its own investigation into Hunter Biden. The complaint alleges that although the two officials downplayed what they knew about the laptop, they took part in numerous discussions about it. Both were leaders of a since-disbanded FBI task force set up to police foreign influence in elections.
Justice Department prosecutor James Kirkpatrick argued that the two had a motive to minimize their knowledge because Hunter Biden’s father was president at the time, and suggested the task force failed to publicly correct claims from some Democrats and former intelligence officials that the laptop was Russian disinformation. “At the end of the day, the FITF got it wrong,” Kirkpatrick said.
Defense lawyers countered that their clients did not lie, had no reason to, and that any false statement would have been unintentional, the result of vague questioning or faulty memory. “There is absolutely zero proof that Mr. Benavides knew and remembered and misled,” said Ron Safer, a lawyer for Benavides, who also argued the task force never made an assessment on the laptop’s authenticity.
The case was filed via a criminal complaint rather than a grand jury indictment, an unusual mechanism. FBI special agent Bryan Witt, who investigated the case, testified that he regarded it as a “huge distraction” from his other work and understood it could be seen as political. He said Patel mandated the investigation, took an unusual interest in it and received regular updates, and that the FBI was directed to investigate Floris after a July primetime speech in which Trump amplified debunked theories about his 2020 election loss.
