Laptop dispute: Judge dismisses midnight DOJ filing against ex-FBI leaders
A magistrate struck an unsigned obstruction charge added hours before a preliminary hearing, citing a rare procedural lapse in the case.
By Rafael Bailey ·
U.S. Magistrate Zia Faruqui struck an amended criminal complaint from the docket on Tuesday after the Justice Department filed it in the middle of the night without a judge's sign-off. The filing added a new obstruction charge to the existing case against Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, two former FBI officials accused of lying to Congress about their knowledge of a laptop.
The laptop, which the Justice Department says belonged to Hunter Biden, was left at a computer repair shop in Delaware in 2019. The original complaint, announced on Friday, accuses Floris and Benavides of falsely minimizing what they knew about the device. The new charge claimed their statements allowed them to avoid questioning and impeded a House investigation.
Faruqui noted that unsigned complaints are not standard practice in his court. He questioned why the government changed its charging history in this specific instance. "I want to know why the United States is reticent or averse to putting before a probable cause determination that you must believe is righteous," Faruqui said during the hearing in Washington.
The dismissal set back a department that has pursued several politically charged investigations ahead of the midterm elections next week. The original false statements case remains active as the preliminary hearing continued. Defense lawyers challenged the use of a criminal complaint signed by a magistrate rather than a grand jury indictment, a method the Justice Department has used in recent high-profile cases.
Attorneys for Floris and Benavides described the midnight filing as unusual in a statement issued early Tuesday. "In our combined decades of DOJ service," the lawyers wrote, "we have never seen or even heard of something like this being filed." They argued the new charge was as meritless as the first.
The case centers on the Foreign Influence Task Force, which Floris and Benavides led. The unit was created to monitor foreign influence campaigns and was disbanded in February 2025 by Attorney General Pam Bondi. In August 2020, the officials briefed Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson while the lawmakers investigated Hunter Biden's work in Ukraine.
The laptop surfaced in 2020 when the New York Post reported on emails from a hard drive obtained by Rudy Giuliani. The publication said the drive came from a laptop Hunter Biden dropped off at a repair shop. The discovery raised questions about Russian involvement, though then-national intelligence director John Ratcliffe said there were no signs of Russian actors. The FBI later investigated Hunter Biden on gun and tax charges, leading to felony convictions and a presidential pardon in late 2024.
