{"id":228523,"date":"2026-10-24T04:39:07","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T04:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/two-ex-fbi-officials-charged-with-lying-about-investigation-into-hunter-bidens-laptop-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T04:39:07","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T04:39:07","slug":"two-ex-fbi-officials-charged-with-lying-about-investigation-into-hunter-bidens-laptop-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/two-ex-fbi-officials-charged-with-lying-about-investigation-into-hunter-bidens-laptop-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Two ex-FBI officials charged with lying about investigation into Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Contents of laptop of Joe Biden\u2019s son were part of a bizarre saga in the final weeks of 2020 presidential election
Two former FBI<\/a> intelligence officials who specialized in foreign election interference were charged on Friday with making false statements about their roles in investigating the origins of Hunter Biden<\/a>\u2019s laptop in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election<\/a>.
Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides surrendered on Friday and made their first appearance in federal court in Washington DC. Floris\u2019s legal team expressed outrage at the development coming from the US Department of Justice, the parent agency of the FBI<\/a>.
\u201cNikki Floris is a patriot. She served our nation as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years. Yet today, the [justice department] has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts. It\u2019s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election,\u201d her attorneys said in a statement.
The case was filed 10 days before the 3 November midterm elections<\/a> and marks the latest in a series of high-profile and politically charged investigative actions the justice department has undertaken in the run-up during the height of campaigning ahead of the vote.
The prosecution, a rare justice department criminal case against a former employee, revisits a tangled and bizarre saga that roiled the final weeks of the 2020 race, in which Joe Biden, Hunter Biden\u2019s father, beat<\/a> Donald Trump but Trump refused to accept the result and tried numerous ways to overturn it \u2013 which ended up in his second impeachment<\/a>, accused of inciting an insurrection attempt on 6 January 2021<\/a>, and criminal charges<\/a> that were ultimately dismissed<\/a> after Trump\u2019s 2024 election victory.
Friday\u2019s court proceedings also came amid a broader, backward-looking effort by the FBI director, Kash Patel<\/a>, who before taking over the nation\u2019s premier law enforcement agency was a harsh critic of it, to scrutinize high-profile episodes from the bureau\u2019s recent past that for years have animated Trump\u2019s conservative base.
The revelation of the laptop\u2019s existence in October 2020 injected a thorny storyline in the race between Trump and Biden.
The laptop\u2019s contents were publicized by the New York Post, which said it had obtained from Trump ally Rudy Giuliani<\/a> a hard drive of a computer dropped off by Hunter Biden at a Wilmington, Delaware, repair shop. The laptop contained emails that appeared to show discussions of the younger Biden\u2019s foreign business dealings.
The peculiar circumstances of the laptop\u2019s discovery raised concerns among Democrats and former intelligence officials about the possibility of Russian disinformation, particularly when the Trump administration\u2019s own intelligence community was assessing that Russia was attempting to interfere<\/a> on Trump\u2019s behalf in the election and as Giuliani had traveled abroad looking for dirt on the Bidens.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contents of laptop of Joe Biden\u2019s son were part of a bizarre saga in the final weeks of 2020 presidential electionTwo former FBI intelligence officials who specialized in foreign election interference were charged on Friday with making false statements about their roles in investigating the origins of Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop in the run-up to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":228524,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}