Hunter Biden laptop issue resurfaces as judge scolds prosecutors over case against ex-FBI officials

Hunter Biden laptop issue resurfaces as judge scolds prosecutors over case against ex-FBI officials A federal judge has scolded the Justice Department for its unorthodox handling of a criminal case against two former FBI officials accused of making false statements to Congress about their participation in and knowledge of investigations involving Hun... WASHINGTON -- A federal judge on Tuesday scolded prosecutors for their unorthodox handling of a criminal case against two former FBI officials accused of making false statements to Congress about their knowledge of a laptop the Justice Department says belonged to Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden. U.S. Magistrate Zia Faruqui rejected an amended criminal complaint filed overnight by the Justice Department that added a new obstruction charge against the two former officials, Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, after concluding that it was improperly submitted. Such charging documents require sign-off from a judge that probable cause exists to believe a crime was committed by a defendant, but this complaint was filed straight to the docket with no court approval. The ruling came during a dramatic, hourslong hearing in which an agent who worked the case conceded under defense lawyer questioning that the investigation was launched after a July speech from President Donald Trump on election interference and that the inquiry was mandated by FBI Director Kash Patel. The agent, Bryan Witt, suggested he had been begrudgingly assigned to the investigation and had regarded it as a “huge distraction” from other casework. “I had concerns that this would be political,” he said. The testimony was elicited by defense lawyers looking to bolster their argument that the prosecution was politically motivated. Faruqui's rebuke, meanwhile, marked a setback for a Justice Department that has employed unusual maneuvers in splashy investigative actions ahead of next week’s midterm elections. Newly unsealed documents in a separate case, for instance, revealed that prosecutors are attempting to again prosecute former FBI Director James Comey, an outspoken Trump critic, in a manner that Comey's lawyers say is legally invalid. The judge said he had never before seen a prosecutor file an unsigned criminal complaint, describing it as “inappropriate” given defendants’ presumption of innocence. He ticked off several atypical aspects of the case, including the decision to file charges via criminal complaint, which the judge noted is more often used when the government has disrupted an active crime or needs to take a defendant into custody immediately because of a potential danger to society. “Everything is a little sideshow on top of a sideshow,” Faruqui said, saying prosecutors appeared to be throwing “gas” on defendants’ assertions that there is nothing typical about this case. Witt testified that Patel had directed that the investigation be opened after a Trump primetime address in July in which the president amplified debunked theories about the 2020 election he lost and elevated his yearslong push to raise doubts about the legitimacy of U.S. elections. Among the grievances the White House raised at the time was a disputed FBI intelligence report about an alleged effort by China to influence the election through fraudulent driver's licenses. Trump and some allies have cited the memo as proof of what they contend was a Chinese plot to intervene in favor of Joe Biden, his Democratic opponent. But senior FBI officials ordered the document recalled because of concerns about the validity of the intelligence. Witt, who works in Kansas City, Missouri, said Patel assigned the investigation to his office and said he was directed to investigate Floris and other officials who were believed to be involved in recalling the memo. He said the basis for the investigation was Trump administration suspicions that the FBI in 2020 had suppressed intelligence that could have been harmful to the Bidens. He said he understood the fact that the inquiry was opened in the aftermath of a Trump speech, and at the behest of the FBI director, made it appear like a “political" investigation. Patel and FBI leadership, he said, maintained a keen interest in the probe. “They wanted us to investigate aggressively,” Witt said. Even before that testimony was given, Mary Dohrmann, another lawyer for Floris, broached what she called the “elephant in the room,” saying “evidence is mounting that this prosecution is about some political football — and not the law or the facts.” The case, announced Friday, accuses Floris and Benavides of falsely playing down their knowledge about a laptop the Justice Department says Hunter Biden abandoned at a computer repair shop in 2019. Prosecutors say they claimed to have no independent insight into the FBI's possession of the laptop while being interviewed in 2023 in a separate congressional investigation related to the Biden family. In reality, according to the criminal complaint, the two participated in numerous discussions about the laptop in their capacity as leaders of the since-disbanded FBI Foreign Influence Task Force that was set up to monitor foreign influence. The Justice Department contends that the defendants' professed lack of knowledge allowed them to avoid further questioning about Hunter Biden and impeded the congressional investigation. But Ron Safer, a lawyer for Benavides, challenged that assertion during the hearing Tuesday. He suggested that his client had no motive to lie and pointed out that Benavides was questioned in 2023, long after he had left his position on the task force, about events that had occurred several years earlier. “What evidence have you uncovered that in September of 2023, Mr. Benavides remembered the correct answers, in your view, to the questions asked about Hunter Biden but gave knowingly incorrect answers?” Safer asked Witt. The prosecution revisits a tangled saga that roiled the final weeks of the 2020 race after the New York Post revealed the existence of a laptop it said had been dropped off by the younger Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop about a year earlier. The Post said it had obtained a hard drive of the laptop from Rudy Giuliani, a close ally of President Donald Trump, and reported on some of the contents of the computer, including emails that appeared to show some of Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings. The curious circumstances of the laptop’s discovery raised concerns among Democrats and former intelligence officials about the possibility of Russian involvement, particularly when the Trump administration’s own intelligence community had assessed that Moscow was attempting to undermine the candidacy of Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who went on to defeat Trump in 2020, and as Giuliani had traveled abroad looking for dirt on the Bidens. But Trump's then-national intelligence director, John Ratcliffe, quickly sought to quell speculation about the laptop's provenance by saying there were no signs it had anything to do with Russian actors. The younger Biden was ultimately convicted on gun and tax charges. President Joe Biden pardoned his son in late 2024.