Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

D.C. Judge Dismisses Case Against Ex-FBI Official Who Bragged About Running ‘Shadow Government’ Before 2020 Election

(Photo via Tingey Injury Law Firm / Unsplash)

A federal judge tossed a criminal complaint against two former FBI officials who falsely told Congress that evidence of Biden family criminality stemmed from a Russian disinformation campaign, decrying “weaponization.”

U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui complained that the Department of Justice had amended its criminal complaint and called the charges political given their proximity to the midterm election Tuesday, the Associated Press reported.

The Justice Department could still pursue a grand jury indictment, though it may not succeed in the liberal enclave of Washington, D.C.

“What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization,” Faruqui said, according to the AP. “I will not bury my head in the sand and pretend that I cannot read a calendar.”

Yet it appears the judge did not consult the 2020 calendar, as many of the actions that brought Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides under the scrutiny of law enforcement in the first place occurred in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Floris and her co-defendant Bradley Benavides have denied wrongdoing. Floris’s attorneys 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.”

In the lead-up to that election, the senior FBI officials muddied factual and derogatory reporting about the Biden family by labeling it part and parcel of malign Russian influence, according to the federal government’s legal complaint and declassified documents.

The team ran an FBI operation codenamed “Round River,” the aim of which was to paint derogatory information about Biden, corruption and Ukraine as Russian disinformation. The so-called “Ukraine narrative” included information about the Biden family and Burisma, Hunter Biden, Mykola Zlochevsky, and Ukraine interference in the 2016 election.

Faruqui, the federal judge, noted that the investigation was opened a day after a July primetime speech by Trump about election security.

But that speech drew on the recent discoveries of a White House Transparency Task Force helmed by journalist John Solomon.

The task force uncovered documents revealing that Floris had privately bragged about running a “shadow government” in September 2020. At the time, she was prematurely retracting a tip alleging Chinese election interference before it could be thoroughly investigated or reach Trump’s President’s Daily Brief.

“AAAAAAAH SNAPS!!!! Well done [REDACTED] THANK YOU for handling!!!” she wrote after the Albany field office that received the tip retracted it before investigating.

Floris did not stop there. As she worked to retract the explosive tip, FBI headquarters in Washington informed every field office that she would micromanage any tip alleging foreign interference.

“We’ll get this back in a box!” she informed her colleagues.

The Justice Department complaint stemmed from false statements that Floris and Benavides gave to Congress.

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.

Other evidence indicates that Floris helped to shape the fake media narrative that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.

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.

At the time of their congressional testimony, Floris and Benavides were well aware that another arm of the FBI had obtained the laptop as part of a criminal investigation into Hunter Biden, the legal complaint alleges.