Federal prosecutors add new charges to ex-FBI officials in Hunter Biden probe case

Federal prosecutors filed new criminal charges against two former FBI counterintelligence officials on Tuesday.

The superseding complaint accuses Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides of obstructing a congressional proceeding and lying to lawmakers about their roles in the bureau's investigations of Hunter Biden.

The document, which is unsigned and unsworn, was filed early Tuesday morning. This timing places the filing just hours before the defendants are scheduled to appear in federal court in Washington, D.C., for a preliminary hearing.

At that hearing, attorneys for Floris and Benavides plan to question one of the government's witnesses. The goal is to test the strength of the complaint and determine if the Justice Department can demonstrate probable cause for a crime.

The new counts center on testimony the pair gave to a congressional committee. Floris testified on July 19, 2023, while Benavides testified on September 28, 2023. The complaint alleges they knowingly and willfully provided materially false statements about their awareness of and involvement in the FBI's work on the Hunter Biden cases.

The charges focus specifically on their roles on the Foreign Influence Task Force and a counterintelligence operation called Round River. This operation aimed to collect derogatory informant reporting on Hunter Biden to flag it as Russian disinformation before the 2020 election.

Floris served as deputy assistant director of the task force from mid-2019 through mid-2022. Benavides served as its section chief from mid-2019 through the 2020 election. The complaint claims the false statements were made to minimize the task force's engagement in the investigations and to impede the congressional inquiry.

The decision to file these charges so close to the midterm elections has drawn attention from former prosecutors and federal officials. Criminal complaints in felony cases are usually reserved for exigent circumstances, such as ongoing threats to public safety. Justice Department guidelines typically urge prosecutors to avoid overt investigative steps on politically sensitive cases near a national election.

Floris' legal team called the overnight filing an attempt to fix issues with the original charge and add a new count they deem meritless.

"What is going on at the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office? In the middle of the night, the government filed an unsigned and unsworn complaint attempting to fix the issues with their original charge against Ms. Floris and adding a new charge just as meritless as the first one," the legal team said in a statement provided to CBS News.

The lawyers added that in their combined decades of service at the Justice Department, they had never seen a similar document filed in this manner. They noted that public lodging of criminal charges must usually be authorized by a grand jury, a judge, or the defendant. The team argued the government took that power for itself to delay the client's right to challenge the charges in court.

The legal team stated they have asked to address the government's conduct at the court hearing scheduled for Tuesday.