Two former FBI intelligence officials who once specialized in tracking foreign election interference were charged Friday with making false statements about their roles investigating the origins of Hunter Biden's laptop ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides surrendered and made their first appearance in federal court in Washington the same day.
According to click2houston.com, the case was announced 11 days before the Nov. 3 elections, a timing detail that has become central to how Floris's attorneys are framing their defense. Floris's lawyers described the charges as “nonsense” and said, “It's no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election.”
Her attorneys went further, arguing that the Justice Department has “accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts.” They also emphasized her record with the bureau, saying she “served our nation as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years,” according to the same report from WBAL NewsRadio.
Who Is Nikki Floris
Floris is a former FBI intelligence official who specialized in foreign election interference, per the click2houston.com report. The station's account notes she helped oversee election security for the 2020 presidential contest, according to the Washington Examiner.
That outlet reports Floris joined the FBI as an intelligence analyst in 2005 and later moved into the bureau's Counterintelligence Division in 2018. She testified before the House Judiciary Committee on October 22, 2019, addressing election security and foreign threats, the Examiner's account states.
During that 2019 testimony, Floris told lawmakers, “we have not seen anything specific regarding hacking into the electoral systems of the 2020 elections,” per the Examiner. That statement, delivered a year before the contested presidential race, is now part of the public record surrounding her FBI tenure as the new charges unfold.
Broader Context Around the Charges
The charges against Floris and Benavides arrive against a backdrop of continued federal scrutiny of the 2020 election. A February 2025 joint statement from the U.S. Department of Justice said the department and the Department of Homeland Security had investigated public claims involving possible foreign-government control or manipulation of election infrastructure used in the 2020 federal elections.
A related publication dated April 2025 from the Department of Homeland Security offered a declassified overview of findings and recommendations from a classified joint report on foreign-government activities tied to the 2020 elections.
What happens next in federal court, and whether either defendant has entered a plea, has not been reported in the available coverage. For now, the case stands as a fresh flashpoint in the long-running fight over how the government handled questions of foreign interference and the Hunter Biden laptop story in the run-up to the 2020 election.
