Justice Department failed to indict Hutchinson and charged Comey on leak allegations

Speaking from the bench in Washington, U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said prosecutors had not shown that former FBI officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides had any intent or motive to lie to Congress. The ruling dismissed charges arising from the officials’ alleged statements to Congress in 2023.

Faruqui described the Justice Department’s case as a “slapdash job.” He said the case was rife with missteps and created political theater ahead of the midterm election. “I am deeply troubled,” Faruqui said. “What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization.”

Prosecutors alleged that Floris, 46, and Benavides, 56, lied in 2023 during a Republican-led congressional investigation. In court papers, prosecutors said the two minimized their knowledge and involvement in the investigation of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and the laptop he left at a computer repair shop.

Floris and Benavides served on the FBI’s foreign influence task force, a group created after Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and designed to help agencies monitor clandestine efforts by foreign governments to influence U.S. politics.

Lawyers for the former FBI officials argued that politics had infected the case and that the prosecution centered on statements that had no reasonable chance of impairing the House Republicans’ investigation. Floris defense lawyer Mary Dohrmann said in court last week, “A political prosecution is always going to make for a shaky foundation for a criminal case.”

The Wall Street Journal described the dismissal as another blow to the Justice Department. The newspaper said the department had launched a series of rapid legal maneuvers to advance President Trump’s demands to prosecute his political foes ahead of the midterms, with limited success.

Prosecutors last week tried and failed to obtain an indictment of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. The effort concerned her testimony to Congress more than four years earlier, which linked Trump to the Jan. 6, 2021, violence at the U.S. Capitol.

The Justice Department also charged former FBI Director James Comey on allegations that he leaked national-defense information 10 years ago. Legal experts said that case appeared to be on shaky ground.

Justice Department spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment.