A federal judge in Washington dismissed the criminal case against two former FBI officials on Monday, November 2, 2026, ruling that prosecutors had not shown probable cause that they lied to Congress about the investigation into Hunter Biden's laptop. The decision ends, at least for now, a prosecution that the judge described in unusually blunt terms as a politically driven use of federal law enforcement, delivered on the eve of the November 3 midterm elections.

US Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui threw out the criminal complaint against Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, both former high-ranking FBI counterintelligence officials, after a probable-cause hearing last week in which defence lawyers picked apart the government's case witness by witness. The ruling does not decide every disputed fact about what the two officials knew years ago. It decides something narrower and, for the Justice Department, more damaging: that the material put before the court did not add up to a lawful basis to keep the case going.

The FBI officials case dismissed on Monday had accused Floris and Benavides of making false statements to Congress in 2023, when they testified before the House Judiciary Committee about their knowledge of, and involvement in, FBI work connected to Hunter Biden and material from his laptop. Prosecutors said the pair denied or downplayed their roles in certain events. The judge found that several of the statements at issue were not false at all, and that others could be explained as honest mistakes of memory rather than deliberate deception.

Key Points

• Judge Zia Faruqui dismissed the criminal complaint against former FBI officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides on Monday, November 2, 2026, finding no probable cause.
• The judge said the investigation was rushed, overtly political and marked by critical mistakes, calling it "weaponization" of federal law enforcement.
• An FBI agent testified that he found no evidence the officials had a motive to lie, and no evidence that Congress's Biden investigation was slowed or changed by their answers.
• The Justice Department may still seek a grand jury indictment, but it has not said it will do so, and a department spokesperson did not immediately comment on the ruling.
• The dismissal came one day before the 2026 midterm elections, a timing the judge addressed directly from the bench.

What Happened

Faruqui announced his decision at a hearing in Washington federal court on Monday, after days of testimony the previous week. He had already signalled scepticism about the prosecution in late October, when he struck from the record an unsigned and unsworn superseding complaint that prosecutors had filed after midnight on October 27, while leaving the original charges, filed on October 23, in place. Monday's ruling went much further: it disposed of the complaint itself.

"I am deeply troubled by what has happened in this case," Faruqui said, according to court reporting of the hearing. He said the case was built on assumptions and had begun at the direction of President Donald Trump. "What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization," he added, saying the episode had become "marketing material for people not to join the FBI."

At the heart of the judge's reasoning was motive, or rather its absence. The government alleged that Floris and Benavides lied to lawmakers, but the FBI agent who worked the case, Bryan Witt of the bureau's Kansas City field office, testified that he had found no evidence of a motive for either official to lie about the laptop investigation. Faruqui seized on that admission. "Without motive, without direct motive, I have nothing" to support a finding of probable cause, he said.

The judge also found that there was no evidence that the Republican-led House investigation into the Biden family had been slowed down or altered because of the answers the defendants gave. That point matters because a false-statement case does not rest only on whether words were imprecise. Prosecutors must show that the statements were knowingly false and material. If the answers did not change the course of the congressional inquiry, and if the witnesses had no reason to mislead, the foundation of the case weakens considerably.

Floris broke down in tears in the courtroom and hugged her lawyers and former colleagues after the ruling. Dozens of former FBI officials attended Monday's hearing, including former Acting Director Brian Driscoll, in a visible show of support for the two defendants.

Background and Context

Floris and Benavides both helped supervise the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force, a unit set up to limit attempts by foreign governments, including Russia and China, to sway American elections. Floris formerly headed the task force, and Benavides formerly served as a section chief. Their 2023 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee concerned what they knew about FBI investigations touching on Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, and material from a laptop that the Justice Department says was dropped off at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019.

The laptop material surfaced publicly ahead of the 2020 presidential election, when the New York Post published a story about it in October 2020. The episode became one of the most bitterly contested information fights of that campaign, with dozens of former intelligence officials warning at the time that the story bore hallmarks of Russian disinformation, and with an FBI agent later confirming at Hunter Biden's 2024 gun trial that the laptop was his. The criminal case against Floris and Benavides did not put the laptop itself on trial. It put their congressional testimony about the FBI's handling of it on trial, years after the fact.

According to Witt's testimony, the investigation into the two officials did not begin as a routine review of old testimony. It began after Trump, in a July primetime address, attacked officials who had questioned an FBI report claiming that China had attempted to interfere in the 2020 election against him. The following day, Witt testified, FBI Director Kash Patel sent a letter demanding an investigation into the officials for possible conspiracy charges. The stated theory, Witt said, was that people in the intelligence community had suppressed or deliberately held back information damaging to the Bidens.

Inside the bureau, Witt said, people generally viewed the investigation as a "witch-hunt," and he himself had concerns that it would be viewed as political. He testified that he never found evidence to support a deep-state conspiracy to thwart the president. Instead, agents turned to years-old interviews the former officials had given to members of Congress, looking for statements that could be characterised as false.

Witt also testified that Patel and several top FBI officials, including deputy directors, were routinely updated on the case through video conferences, in-person meetings and emails, and that FBI leadership was closely monitoring progress in a way he described as unusual. At several moments during last week's hearing, prosecutors tried to shut down questions about the origins of the investigation, arguing that they belonged at a later stage, in arguments over whether the case was selective or vindictive. The judge plainly did not accept that the origins could be set aside.

Another weakness emerged in the government's own evidence. The staff member the FBI and prosecutors relied on to establish that the defendants' testimony was untrue and had hampered the House Judiciary Committee's investigation had not attended one of the interviews in question and had not reviewed the years-old transcripts, Witt testified. Instead, a phone call with that staff member took place on the Monday after the initial complaint against the two officials had already been filed. For a judge weighing probable cause, that sequence raised an obvious question: how firm could the complaint have been when a central supporting account was gathered only afterwards?

FBI Officials Case Dismissed: What Judge Faruqui Actually Ruled

It is important to be precise about what Monday's ruling is, and what it is not. Faruqui dismissed a criminal complaint at the probable-cause stage. That is an early stage of a federal case, before any trial, and it is a lower bar than proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The judge's conclusion was that prosecutors had not cleared even that lower bar: they had not shown sufficient evidence that Floris and Benavides knowingly made false statements to Congress.

The ruling is therefore not a jury verdict that every word the officials spoke in 2023 was accurate. Faruqui's own analysis drew distinctions. Some statements, he found, were not false. Others, he said, could be attributed to honest mistakes of memory about events from years earlier. And for the statements that prosecutors insisted were false, he found no evidence of intent or motive to deceive. Without that evidence, the complaint could not survive.

The judge also addressed timing head-on. He noted that the Justice Department could have brought a case arising from 2023 statements at any time, but chose to do so about two weeks before the midterm elections, in which control of Congress is at stake. "I will not bury my head in the sand and pretend I cannot read a calendar," he said. "I will not lobotomize myself that way." He added: "What person in their right mind" would join the FBI after watching such a case unfold?

That language, unusually personal for a judicial ruling, is likely to be quoted in every future argument about the case, whichever side makes it. Supporters of the defendants will present it as a judicial finding that the prosecution was political. The Justice Department, if it chooses to press on, will have to argue that the judge weighed the evidence too strictly at too early a stage, and that a grand jury, presented with a fuller record, could see the matter differently.

Reactions and Quotes

Floris's legal team did not mince words after the hearing. "This so-called prosecution was nothing more than a politically-motivated smear campaign aimed at scoring political points before the midterm elections," the team said in a statement. Kimberly Paschall, a lawyer for Benavides, called the case "an indictment on this current department," turning the language of prosecution back on the prosecutors.

A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling, according to Reuters reporting. That silence leaves open the most consequential question: whether the department will accept the dismissal, or try to revive the case by seeking an indictment from a grand jury. Prosecutors can attempt that route, but they would need grand-jury approval, and grand juries in Washington have declined to approve several high-profile cases during Trump's second term, a record that makes any renewed effort far from automatic.

The reaction inside the former FBI community was visible in the courtroom itself. The presence of dozens of former officials, including a former acting director, was itself a statement: that many veterans of the bureau regard the prosecution as a warning to current agents about the risks of testifying before Congress or of questioning intelligence assessments that a president dislikes. Whether that warning effect outlasts the dismissal will depend on what the department does next.

Political reaction is likely to split along familiar lines. Critics of the Trump administration will present the ruling as confirmation that the Justice Department has been used against perceived adversaries. Supporters of the administration are likely to argue that the judge overstepped, and that the underlying questions about how the FBI handled the Hunter Biden material before the 2020 election have still not been fully answered. Neither reading changes the legal fact of Monday's order, but both will shape how it is used in the final hours of the midterm campaign.

Why It Matters

The dismissal matters for three reasons that go beyond the fate of two former officials. First, it is a judicial rebuke of a prosecution that the judge found was launched from the top of the FBI, tracked closely by its leadership, and rushed into court close to an election. Courts rarely use the word "weaponization" about the Justice Department itself. When a federal magistrate judge does so, in open court, the words carry weight even if the department disputes them.

Second, the case tests the boundary between accountability and retaliation. Former officials who testify before Congress can and should be held to account if they lie. But if the process of pursuing them begins with a presidential speech, is driven by a demand for a conspiracy investigation that agents cannot substantiate, and ends with a complaint built on statements gathered after the fact, then the accountability argument collapses into something else. Faruqui's ruling says, in effect, that this case crossed that boundary.

Third, the timing gives the ruling a political significance that the judge himself acknowledged. The midterms on Tuesday, November 3, will decide whether Republicans keep their narrow majorities in Congress or whether Democrats gain the power to investigate, subpoena and legislate against the administration's wishes. A high-profile dismissal, with a judge accusing the department of political timing, lands in the middle of that contest, whether or not the judge intended it as a campaign intervention. Voters will hear about it as part of the closing argument about the rule of law, and both parties will try to claim it.

There is also a narrower institutional consequence. The FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force no longer exists in its former form, but the questions it handled, about foreign interference and about how intelligence is assessed and shared, have not gone away. Agents who work on those questions will read Monday's ruling, and the testimony that preceded it, as a lesson in what happens when an investigation's origins are political. That lesson may make future agents more cautious, in ways that help or hinder legitimate investigations, depending on one's view of the bureau.

What Happens Next

The immediate question is whether the Justice Department will seek a grand jury indictment against Floris and Benavides. Nothing in Monday's ruling prevents it from trying, but a fresh presentation would have to overcome the weaknesses Faruqui identified: the absence of evidence of motive, the absence of evidence that Congress's inquiry was impeded, and the reliance on a supporting account that was not in place when the complaint was filed. A grand jury would also have to be persuaded that statements made in 2023, about events from even earlier, were knowingly false rather than mistaken.

If the department does not re-present the case, the dismissal will stand as the final word on this complaint, and Floris and Benavides will be free of the charges that have hung over them since October 23. If it does re-present and a grand jury declines, as Washington grand juries have done in other high-profile matters this term, the political damage to the department would deepen. If a grand jury indicts, the case would move to a trial track, and the arguments about selective prosecution that prosecutors tried to defer last week would return in full.

Either way, the ruling is likely to be cited in other cases in which defendants argue that prosecutions of former officials have been selective or vindictive. Judges in those cases will not be bound by Faruqui's probable-cause finding, but they will read his reasoning about motive, timing and the quality of the complaint. Defence lawyers across Washington will already be doing so.

For the public, the next update to watch for is a statement from the Justice Department. Until it speaks, the case sits in an unusual position: dismissed by a judge who accused the department of weaponization, with no official response on the record, on the eve of an election in which the independence of federal law enforcement is itself a campaign issue.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides?

They are former high-ranking FBI counterintelligence officials who helped supervise the bureau's Foreign Influence Task Force. Floris formerly headed the task force, and Benavides formerly served as a section chief. They were accused of lying to the House Judiciary Committee in 2023 about their knowledge of FBI investigations connected to Hunter Biden's laptop.

What exactly did Judge Faruqui decide on Monday?

He dismissed the criminal complaint against both officials, finding that prosecutors had not shown probable cause that they knowingly made false statements to Congress. Some statements were not false, he found, and others could be honest mistakes of memory. He also found no evidence of a motive to lie.

Does the dismissal mean the officials are innocent of everything?

No. A probable-cause dismissal is an early-stage ruling, not a trial verdict. It means the government did not clear even the lower threshold needed to keep this complaint alive. It does not decide every historical question about the FBI's handling of the laptop material.

Can prosecutors bring the case back?

Yes, they can seek a grand jury indictment, but they would need grand-jury approval and would have to address the weaknesses the judge identified. The Justice Department has not said whether it will try, and a spokesperson did not immediately comment on the ruling.

Why did the judge mention the midterm elections?

Because the case, arising from 2023 testimony, was filed about two weeks before the November 3 midterms. Faruqui said he would not pretend he could not read a calendar, and he described the investigation as rushed and overtly political. The timing was part of his reasoning about how the case came to court.

Related coverage on US News Pulse: the judge's earlier ruling striking the overnight superseding complaint in this same case, the Trump administration's election-eve Supreme Court fight over California ballots, and Ohio's record early-voting tally before Election Day.

Sources: CNN, Reuters via the Jerusalem Post, Associated Press reporting, and the New York Post, November 2, 2026. This is a developing story and will be updated if the Justice Department responds.