Investigative Group

Was Arrested FBI Official A Source For Former NBC Reporter’s Hunter Biden Laptop Russian Disinfo ‘Scoop?’

Billy Hathorn, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

An FBI official who boasted about running a “shadow government” helped to shape the media narrative that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation, a new legal complaint suggests.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Friday the arrest of former FBI Foreign Interference Task Force (FITF) Chief Nikki Floris. In the lead-up to the 2020 election between President Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Biden, Floris muddied factual and derogatory reporting about the Biden family by labeling it a part and parcel of malign Russian influence, according to the legal complaint and declassified documents.

The criminal complaint specifically refers to an NBC journalist. The events described align with a story by then-NBC correspondent Ken Dilanian, the outlet’s FBI reporter.

Though the document does not prove Floris was a source for Dilanian, it does indicate that she worked with the media and received a message from NBC at the same time the outlet broke a story that suited the FBI’s narrative.

Floris and co-defendant Bradley Benavides are scheduled to appear in federal magistrate court in Washington, D.C. today. Floris could not be reached for comment.

She has denied wrongdoing through her attorneys, who said in a statement last week that “the DOJ has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts.”

NBC and Dilanian did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The complaint shows that Floris acted as a source for the media in the wake of an Oct. 14, 2020, story revealing some of the damaging contents of a laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a computer repair shop and revealing the FBI had seized it.

The next day, on Oct. 15, 2020, Floris assisted with the FBI’s response to press inquiries. The subject line of one email read “Ny post… morning answer?” and included a question about whether the FBI had the laptop, the legal complaint states.

Floris said to a colleague that she needed to know “if i can confirm FBI in possession of laptop, as i believe the property receipt is in open source,” the complaint shows.

She added that the “logical follow on question” would be what the FBI was doing with it.

Later that day, Floris forwarded a message from an NBC reporter about the seized laptop to FBI executive leadership and her deputy, the complaint shows.

The NBC reporter stated that the outlet would report that “FBI is investigating whether the emails and other materials published by the New York Post are linked to a foreign intelligence operation designed to interfere in the election[,] [a]nd that’s the reason the laptop and hard drive were seized by the FBI.”

That same day, Oct. 15, 2020, Dilanian was the first reporter to break the story that the FBI was in possession of the laptop as part of an investigation into a Russian disinformation scheme, citing two anonymous sources.

“Federal investigators are examining whether emails allegedly describing activities by Joe Biden and his son Hunter and found on a laptop at a Delaware repair shop are linked to a foreign intelligence operation,” Dilanian reported. “It remains unclear whether the emails cited by the Post are authentic or have been doctored.”

Other outlets, including CNN, followed suit.

By Oct. 29, 2020, the Daily Caller News Foundation confirmed that a key email on the Hunter Biden laptop was authentic.

Dilanian is currently a reporter at MSNOW. Earlier in October, Dilanian apologized on air for falsely reporting that FBI Director Kash Patel was in Moscow, a story corrected within hours when Patel appeared in Virginia.

MSNOW did not respond to requests for comment.

Facebook and Twitter quickly censored the Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020. The FBI and other government agencies briefed technology companies for months about the supposed risk of a Russian “hack and leak” scheme.

In fact, the FBI had obtained the laptop in December 2019 as part of a criminal investigation into Hunter Biden for tax and money-laundering offenses, the complaint states. In 2024 he was convicted of three federal felony charges related to his purchase of a handgun while using narcotics and pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges, but he received a pardon from his father in his final days in office in December of that year.

The complaint includes evidence that Floris was well aware of this fact. For instance, the FBI official who oversaw the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden said Floris was in frequent communication with that team, the complaint states.

Floris told a colleague “I am basically running a shadow government inside the FBI right now” in September 2020, according to documents declassified in July.

“As we’ve said repeatedly: weaponization will never be tolerated at this FBI. We have already dismantled the corrupt CR-15 squad that engaged in political weaponization targeting their opponents, including President Trump – and anyone who abuses their position of public trust will be held accountable,” the FBI said in a statement.

‘Round River’

Floris ran an operation codenamed “Round River” that labeled derogatory information about Biden, corruption and Ukraine supplied by confidential human sources as Russian disinformation, declassified documents have revealed.

The FBI’s distinction between “conduits” of Russian disinformation and “targets” of Russian disinformation is clear: The bureau classified Republicans as the perpetrators and Democrats as the victims.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Rep. Jim Jordan, former Rep. Devin Nunes, One America News Network correspondent Chanel Rion and journalist John Solomon were among the individuals the FBI smeared as instruments of a Russian psyop.

The FBI deemed Democratic powerbroker George Soros, former Secretary of State John Kerry, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as targets of the supposed psyop.

The new court documents cite testimony from an FBI official who confirms that a core purpose of Round River was “scrutinizing informant intelligence relating to the Hunter Biden investigations as potential disinformation.”

One tactic the task force used to discredit concerns about Biden and Ukraine was to give defensive briefings to Congress, which are supposed to protect an individual from foreign influence or espionage, the court documents state.

In August 2020, as Senate Republicans were putting their final touches on a report about Hunter Biden’s financial connections to foreign governments, Floris and other FBI officials gave them a behind-the-scenes briefing alleging their work was “a target of Russian disinformation,” per a Senate letter.

The Senate investigators — Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson — said in the letter the FBI had not provided any evidence. They said they suspected the sole purpose of the briefing was for the unsubstantiated claim to be leaked to the media. Indeed, it was eventually leaked to the Washington Post.

“Because there was no substance to the briefing … I suspected that the briefing was being given to be used at some future date for the purpose that it is now being used: to offer the biased media an opportunity to falsely accuse me of being a tool of Russia,” Johnson told the paper in response to the leak.

Floris told the House Judiciary Committee in July 2023 that Hunter Biden had never been a topic of discussion within the FBI’s division, a statement disproven by documentary evidence, communications, and witness accounts, according the complaint.