Judge rejects unsigned obstruction charge against ex-FBI officials

A federal judge in Washington struck from the record an amended criminal complaint filed overnight by the Justice Department against two former FBI officials, Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides. The complaint added a new obstruction charge just hours before a court hearing.

The original case accuses Floris and Benavides of making false statements to Congress about their knowledge of a laptop the Justice Department says belonged to Hunter Biden, son of former President Joe Biden. The allegations relate to testimony they gave to the House Judiciary Committee in 2023.

“It is not our court’s practice — and I think it is appropriately not our practice — that unsigned complaints are filed on the docket.”

Defense lawyers called the government’s conduct outrageous, saying they had never seen such a filing in their combined decades of Justice Department service. They noted the unsigned and unsworn complaint was submitted hours before the hearing.

U.S. Magistrate Zia Faruqui said the court does not file unsigned complaints on the docket because such documents require a judge’s probable-cause sign-off. He questioned why the Justice Department changed its charging practice for this one case.

The dismissal was a setback for the department ahead of next week’s midterm elections, but the original false-statements case remained intact as the preliminary hearing proceeded on Tuesday.

The matter also touches on a disbanded FBI task force that monitored foreign influence, which congressional Republicans have criticized for allegedly trying to discredit their investigations into the Biden family.