A federal magistrate judge in Washington on Monday threw out the Justice Department’s criminal complaint against two former FBI counterintelligence officials accused of lying to Congress about the bureau’s handling of the Hunter Biden laptop, one day before the midterm elections.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui dismissed the case against Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides from the bench after an hourlong oral ruling, according to CBS News and Roll Call. CBS News reported that Faruqui called the case “slapdash” and said, “Without motive, without direct evidence, I have nothing. It’s not close. It’s nothing.”
JUST IN: A federal judge threw out a government lawsuit against former FBI officials involved in an investigation into Hunter Biden.
“What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said in a ruling from the…
— The Epoch Times (@EpochTimes) November 2, 2026
Roll Call reported that Faruqui said “what has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization,” calling the case a “rush job” driven by a political push from President Trump. NBC News reported that an FBI agent testified last week that the investigation had been directed by FBI Director Kash Patel.
DOJ pushes back
The Justice Department did not back down. A department spokesperson told CBS News and NBC News that DOJ “disagrees with the Magistrate’s decision, which remarkably appears to suggest that high-ranking government officials are immune from accountability for making materially false statements to Congress.”
“We are evaluating all options but cannot comment further on an ongoing criminal investigation,” the spokesperson said, according to NBC News. “The Department’s actions will continue to be guided by the facts, the evidence, and the law — not politics.”
CBS News reported that the ruling does not permanently end the matter: prosecutors could still appeal Faruqui’s decision to the chief judge or ask a grand jury for an indictment.
What the case was about
The complaint centered on testimony Floris and Benavides gave the House Judiciary Committee in July and September 2023, according to CBS News. Roll Call reported that prosecutors alleged the pair lied to the committee about what they knew of a laptop that had belonged to Hunter Biden and was in the FBI’s possession ahead of the 2020 election.
CBS News reported that prosecutors tied the case to an FBI Foreign Influence Task Force operation known as “Round River,” which they said was focused on collecting “derogatory informant reporting on, among other things, Hunter Biden, to flag the reporting as Russian disinformation.” Floris served as deputy assistant director of that task force from mid-2019 through mid-2022, and Benavides was its section chief through the 2020 election, according to the complaint as described by CBS News.
According to CBS News, the two officials also gave defensive briefings to Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson in August 2020, which ultimately led House Judiciary to call them to testify three years later. NBC News noted that data from the laptop later led to successful criminal charges against Hunter Biden.
How the judge ruled
Roll Call reported that Faruqui found no evidence that either official knowingly said anything false to the committee, and that he said many of the statements prosecutors flagged were not false at all. NBC News reported the judge found the government failed to show probable cause.
NBC News reported that prosecutors brought the case by criminal complaint instead of going to a grand jury in Washington, where jurors have recently rejected other politically charged cases. CBS News reported that prosecutors also tried to add obstruction-of-Congress charges through an unsigned, unsworn superseding complaint filed after midnight before the hearing, which Faruqui struck from the record.
The ruling lands as Republicans head into Tuesday’s elections arguing that federal agencies treated the laptop story unfairly in 2020. For now, the question of whether anyone answers for how the FBI handled it moves back to the Justice Department’s next decision.
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- Original post: The Epoch Times (@EpochTimes) on X, Nov 2, 2026
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