Judge cites ''weaponization'' in tossing charges for ex-FBI agents accused of lying about Hunter Biden

Washington, Nov 3 (AP) A federal judge on Monday dismissed a criminal complaint against two former FBI officials accused of lying to Congress about Hunter Biden, citing what he said was the “weaponization” of President Donald Trump's Justice Department just before the midterm elections.

    In a scathing, hourlong ruling read from the bench, US Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said the investigation that produced the charges against Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides was rushed, conducted at the behest of Trump and FBI Director Kash Patel and dogged by “critical mistakes" that require the dismissal of the case.

    “I am deeply troubled by what has happened here," Faruqui said. “What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization.”

    The ruling may not bring a permanent end to the matter because the Justice Department still has the option of pursuing an indictment, even though it has struggled during the Trump administration to persuade grand juries in the nation's capital to deliver criminal charges in politically sensitive prosecutions like this one.

    In the meantime, though, it amounts to a resounding rebuke of a department the judge said could have sought an indictment at any time but instead opted for political purposes to file a criminal complaint in the immediate run-up to Tuesday's midterm voting.

    “I will not bury my head in the sand and pretend that I cannot read a calendar,” Faruqui said, alluding to the proximity of the charges to the elections, which will determine control of Congress for the last two years of the Republican president's second term.

    The Justice Department had accused the two former officials of falsely downplaying to Congress their knowledge of investigations into President Joe Biden's son and of a laptop the younger Biden dropped off at a computer repair shop in Delaware in 2019. But Faruqui said the Justice Department failed to establish in its complaint that the statements made during the 2023 testimony were intentionally false, or had impeded the congressional investigation for which the two were summoned to testify. He also said the former officials had no reason to deceive.

    “Without motive, without direct evidence, I have nothing" to go on to establish the probable cause needed to affirm the complaint, Faruqui said.

    Lawyers for Floris, who after the ruling hugged supporters outside the courtroom, said the “so-called prosecution was nothing more than a politically motivated smear campaign aimed at scoring political points before the midterm elections."

    “The charges brought under the clearly discredited authority of the Department of Justice should never have been brought in the first place,” the attorneys said in a statement.

    The Justice Department said in a statement posted on X that it disagreed with Faruqui's ruling and was evaluating its options.

    The judge identified a political motive and critical mistakes'

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     The dismissal followed a dramatic three-day hearing last week in which an FBI agent who had been assigned to investigate the case conceded that the inquiry had been regarded around his office as something of a “witch hunt” and that he himself had considered it a “huge distraction” from his ordinary work.

    The agent, Bryan Witt, said the investigation was launched one day after a primetime election security speech from Trump in which the president rehashed longstanding grievances over his 2020 loss to Joe Biden, a Democrat. He said the investigation was assigned to his Kansas City, Missouri, office and said Patel, a close Trump ally, demanded and received regular updates — something Witt said was unusual.

    In issuing his order Monday, Faruqui recounted the pressure to deliver that Witt said he operated under and faulted the Trump administration for a rushed investigation that undermined the results.

    “The rush to charge led to critical mistakes,” he said, citing investigative shortcomings and factual mistakes in charging documents.

    The judge's concerns about the case were apparent from the first time Floris and Benavides appeared in his courtroom, when he raised questions about why the Justice Department had charged them through a criminal complaint — which is more typically done when investigators have a pressing need to take a defendant into custody — as opposed to an indictment that requires a grand jury's approval.

    “It is self-evident that the US attorney's office is avoiding taking this case to a grand jury,” Faruqui said Monday.

    Last week, the Justice Department failed to secure a grand jury indictment against Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House staffer who provided dramatic but disputed testimony against Trump before a House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, US Capitol insurrection.

    Then, at a preliminary hearing last week, Faruqui criticized the Justice Department for filing overnight an amended complaint with an additional criminal charge straight to the docket instead of first clearing the new charge with the court — something he said he had never seen before.

     The case concerns years-old questions about a laptop

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     The criminal complaint centered on a laptop the Justice Department says Hunter Biden abandoned at a Wilmington, Delaware, computer repair shop in 2019. The laptop's existence was revealed in an October 2020 New York Post story that described email correspondence found on the computer concerning the younger Biden's foreign business dealings.

    Prosecutors alleged that Floris and Benavides misled Congress about their knowledge of the laptop when questioned in 2023 by the House Judiciary Committee as the Republican-led panel was conducting its own investigation of the Biden family.

    At the FBI, the two officials had been leaders of the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force, which was established during the first Trump administration to track foreign influence campaigns and was disbanded last year. They have for years been targets of congressional Republican criticism, including because of 2020 briefings to Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson on the threat of Russian disinformation that the GOP lawmakers said had the effect of attempting to discredit an investigation into the Bidens that they were doing.

    A prosecutor argued last week that the former officials may have had an incentive to minimize their knowledge of the laptop because Joe Biden was president at the time they were questioned and to distance themselves from the fact that the task force did not publicly correct a narrative advanced by some Democrats and former intelligence officials that the laptop might somehow have been connected to Russian disinformation.

    Defense lawyers vigorously rejected the idea that their clients had any motive to lie and suggested any incorrect statements that were made were the result of ambiguous questions or faulty memories — not an intent to deceive. (AP) APL

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(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)