A federal judge in Washington on Monday dismissed the Justice Department's criminal case against two former FBI officials accused of lying to Congress about the bureau's investigations into Hunter Biden, delivering a sharp rebuke to prosecutors on the eve of the midterm elections. U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui ruled that prosecutors had failed to establish probable cause that Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides knowingly made false statements, and he described the investigation behind the charges as rushed, riddled with errors, and timed to the political calendar.
The ruling, delivered from the bench after a days-long preliminary hearing last week, is a significant setback for the Justice Department, which brought the case about two weeks before voters were due to go to the polls on Tuesday, November 3. According to reports, it is one of several politically charged actions by the department under President Donald Trump in the run-up to the midterms, and it lands amid a wider pattern of difficulty for prosecutors in persuading grand juries in the nation's capital to return indictments in politically charged cases.
The Ruling From the Bench
Faruqui spent about an hour laying out the basis for his decision before a packed courtroom that included many former senior FBI officials, according to NPR's reporting of the hearing. He said he was deeply troubled by what had happened in the case, and he did not soften his assessment of how it had been assembled.
"I am deeply troubled by what has happened here," Faruqui said, according to NPR. "What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization."
The judge's ruling came at the end of a preliminary hearing held last week to determine whether probable cause existed to charge Floris and Benavides with lying to Congress. That hearing featured testimony from one of the FBI agents who investigated the case. After the hearing, a group of former FBI officials greeted Floris and Benavides outside the courtroom, and Floris, tears in her eyes, hugged several of her former colleagues before sharing a hug with Benavides, NPR reported.
Margaret Donovan, one of Floris's attorneys, welcomed the ruling in blunt terms. "This case should never have been brought. The government had no case," Donovan said, according to NPR. She described the complaint as a "slap-dash complaint, spaghetti-at-the-wall, Hunter Biden conspiracy fever dream," adding: "But facts still matter in a courtroom. The truth still matters in a courtroom."
A Case Built on a Calendar, the Judge Said
At the heart of Faruqui's ruling was timing. The statements at issue were made to Congress in 2023, yet the Justice Department waited three years to pursue the case, and then brought charges roughly two weeks before the midterm elections, despite a department policy prohibiting the timing of any action to influence an election, NPR reported.
The judge also noted that the investigation into Floris and Benavides was opened on FBI Director Kash Patel's orders the day after President Trump delivered a primetime address on national television in mid-July, in which he repeated his claims about fraud in the 2020 election and urged the FBI to investigate. An FBI agent who worked the case testified that he had been concerned the investigation would be seen as "political," according to the Associated Press's account of the hearing, and that Patel had kept close watch on it.
Faruqui pressed the government on why it had chosen to file the case as a criminal complaint, a document usually used when there is some need for urgency, such as an imminent danger, a statute of limitations deadline, or a risk that a defendant might flee. None of those existed in this case, the judge said.
"The only event that was looming here," he said, "was the midterms."
"I will not bury my head in the sand and pretend I cannot read a calendar," Faruqui said, according to NPR. "I will not lobotomize myself that way."
How the Case Was Put Together
The judge's concerns about the case were apparent almost immediately, according to the Associated Press. He raised questions about why prosecutors had charged the case through a criminal complaint, which is more typically used when investigators have a pressing need to take a defendant into custody, rather than through an indictment that requires a grand jury's approval.
Then, at the preliminary hearing last week, he criticized the department for filing an amended complaint with an additional criminal charge straight to the docket, overnight and without first clearing the new charge with the court, something he said he had never seen before.
The case accused Floris and Benavides of misleading Congress in 2023 about their involvement in, and knowledge of, efforts to investigate a laptop the Justice Department says was dropped off by Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019. Both had served on an FBI task force that examined potential foreign influence in American politics.
The prosecution also sought to echo longstanding grievances by Trump and his Republican allies that the FBI attempted to suppress information during the 2020 presidential campaign that was seen as potentially harmful to the Biden family. The department's case noted, for instance, how Floris and Benavides had given lawmakers in 2020 a "defensive briefing" that Republican Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have said was used to undermine their investigation into the Biden family and link it to Russian disinformation.
Faruqui also said prosecutors appear not to want to take the case before a grand jury, perhaps given the Justice Department's poor track record recently with grand juries in Washington, D.C. On several occasions under the Trump administration, grand juries in the nation's capital have refused to return indictments in high-profile, politically charged cases, NPR reported.
The Justice Department Responds
The Justice Department said it disagrees with the ruling. In a statement, a department spokesperson said the decision "remarkably appears to suggest that high-ranking government officials are immune from accountability for making materially false statements to Congress."
"We are evaluating all options but cannot comment further on an ongoing criminal investigation," the spokesperson said, according to NPR. "The Department's actions will continue to be guided by the facts, the evidence, and the law — not politics."
The department's statement did not say whether it would appeal the ruling or seek an indictment from a grand jury.
What This Means
The dismissal matters for reasons that go beyond the fate of two former officials. First, it is a judicial finding, delivered in unusually blunt language, that a prosecution brought in the final days before a national election failed to clear even the relatively low bar of probable cause.
Second, the ruling exposes the practical limits prosecutors face in Washington. Faruqui himself noted that nothing stops prosecutors from going to a grand jury and trying to secure an indictment, but the department's recent record with grand juries in the capital in politically charged cases has been poor. A dismissal that can be followed by a fresh attempt at indictment is not necessarily the end of the matter, but it is a far weaker position than the one prosecutors occupied when they filed the complaint.
Third, the case underscores how the Hunter Biden laptop saga, which began as a controversy in the weeks before the 2020 election, continues to shape American politics six years later. The laptop and the FBI's handling of it remain a central grievance for Trump and his allies, and prosecutions arising from that history are now being tested, and in this instance rejected, in court.
What Happens Next
The question is what prosecutors do next. Faruqui said nothing stops them from going to a grand jury and trying to secure an indictment, and they could also appeal his decision to the district's chief judge. The department has said only that it is evaluating all options.
For Floris and Benavides, the dismissal ends a criminal case that was filed in the final stretch of a midterm campaign and resolved the day before voters cast their ballots. Whether prosecutors try again, and whether a grand jury would agree where a judge found no probable cause, will determine whether this case becomes a footnote or the opening chapter of a longer legal fight.
Either way, the ruling stands as a rare on-the-record judicial rebuke of a prosecution's timing and construction.
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