The bill is finally coming due for the FBI officials who helped bury the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Two former senior FBI officials surrendered to federal authorities on Friday after the Justice Department charged them with lying to Congress about their roles in the bureau’s handling of investigations tied to Hunter Biden and his infamous laptop.
Nikki Cole Floris and Bradley Benavides, both veterans of the FBI’s now-disbanded Foreign Influence Task Force, are accused of misleading lawmakers during sworn testimony in 2023.
Prosecutors say the evidence flatly contradicts what the pair told Congress about what they knew, and when they knew it.
The details are damning. Benavides allegedly testified that he first learned about the Hunter Biden laptop controversy from Wikipedia.
According to the Justice Department, investigators have evidence that he had actually discussed the laptop story with other FBI personnel, long before he claimed to have stumbled across it online.
Floris faces similar accusations. Prosecutors say she discussed Hunter Biden with fellow task force members despite telling Congress otherwise.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro did not mince words after the arrests were announced.
“When senior FBI agents lie to Congress believing they are above the law, it’s time to bring the hammer of justice down on them,” Pirro said, adding that officials who choose “deception over duty” undermine the very institutions they swore to serve.
FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed the arrests on Friday and dropped the most explosive detail yet: one of the two defendants is on record privately claiming to be “running a shadow government” during the 2020 election.
“As we’ve said repeatedly: weaponization will never be tolerated at this FBI,” Patel said.
Patel did not specify which of the two allegedly made the “shadow government” remark.
But the allegation alone confirms what conservatives have argued for years: that elements inside the bureau saw themselves as an unelected check on the voters heading into the 2020 election.
The laptop, packed with evidence of the Biden family’s overseas business dealings, was treated as a threat to be managed rather than a story to be investigated.
Floris’s attorneys pushed back hard, calling the charges politically motivated and pointing to the timing, just ahead of the midterm elections.
They described Floris as a patriot who served nearly 20 years as an FBI intelligence officer and accused the DOJ of acting “on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts.”
It’s a familiar defense. But it doesn’t answer the central question prosecutors are now putting before a federal court.
Did these officials lie under oath about one of the most politically explosive investigations in FBI history?
To be clear, the charges do not by themselves prove that either defendant interfered in the 2020 election or improperly steered the Hunter Biden investigations. Both Floris and Benavides are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
What the arrests do prove is that the days of the bureau investigating everyone but itself are over.
The case now heads into federal court, where the Justice Department will have to back its allegations with evidence.
Given what has already surfaced, that is a fight worth watching very closely.
Sources: Department of Justice, Fox News
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