“I will not bury my head in the sand and pretend that I cannot read a calendar,” US Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said on Monday as he threw out a criminal complaint against two former FBI officials.
Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides had been accused of making false statements to Congress about Hunter Biden. Faruqui called the investigation rushed, overtly political and marked by “critical mistakes”. His conclusion was unusually blunt: “What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization.”
The inquiry began one day after President Donald Trump delivered a primetime speech revisiting his grievances over the 2020 election. An FBI agent who worked on the investigation testified that FBI Director Kash Patel mandated it and followed it closely. The agent also said they had worried it would be seen as “political”.
A prosecution under the microscope
The allegations concerned statements made in 2023. Prosecutors waited until two weeks ago, shortly before Tuesday’s midterm voting, to bring the case. Faruqui questioned why they used a criminal complaint, normally associated with an urgent need to take a defendant into custody, rather than seeking an indictment approved by a grand jury.
Then came an amended complaint. At a preliminary hearing last week, the judge criticized the Justice Department for adding another criminal charge to the docket overnight without first clearing it with the court. He said he had never encountered that maneuver before.
Dismissal does not necessarily end the matter. The Justice Department could still seek a grand jury indictment, although Faruqui’s decision is a clear setback. Politically contentious prosecutions have already faced resistance from grand juries in Washington.
Floris and Benavides were accused of misleading Congress about their involvement in, and knowledge of, investigations into a laptop that the Justice Department says Hunter Biden left at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019. The case also returned to Republican complaints about the FBI’s conduct during the 2020 campaign.
It cited a “defensive briefing” that the two officials gave lawmakers in 2020. Republican Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have said that briefing undermined their investigation into the Biden administration by associating it with Russian disinformation. Joe Biden defeated Trump in that election.
The bureau behind the case
The FBI is both the principal federal law enforcement agency and the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States. Its jurisdiction covers more than 200 categories of federal crimes. It answers to the attorney general and the director of national intelligence.
Its domestic network comprises 56 field offices and more than 400 resident agencies. Unlike the CIA, which collects intelligence abroad and has no law enforcement authority, the FBI operates mainly inside the United States. It also maintains 60 Legal Attache offices and 15 sub-offices at American embassies and consulates, chiefly to coordinate with foreign security services.
The bureau began as the Bureau of Investigation on July 26, 1908, when Attorney General Charles Bonaparte hired thirty-four people, including former Secret Service personnel. It acquired its present name in 1935. Its stated mission is to “protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States”.
J. Edgar Hoover directed the bureau and its predecessor organizations for a combined 48 years, from 1924 to 1972. After his death, Congress limited future FBI directors to ten years. Monday’s ruling leaves Patel’s close supervision of this investigation documented in testimony from an agent who worked on it.
Sources
- Federal Bureau of Investigation
- Judge dismisses charges against ex-FBI agents accused of lying about Hunter Biden, citing 'weaponization'
- Scam Center Strike Force
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Photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation (Public domain)
