By
/ CBS News
Federal prosecutors filed new criminal charges on Tuesday against two ex-FBI counterintelligence officials, accusing them of obstructing a congressional proceeding and lying to lawmakers about their roles in the bureau's investigations of Hunter Biden.
The unsigned and unsworn superseding complaint, filed early Tuesday morning, comes just hours before the defendants Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides are due to appear in federal court in Washington, D.C. for a preliminary hearing.
At that hearing, attorneys for Floris and Benavides are expected to grill one of the government's witnesses to test the strength of the complaint and whether the Justice Department can demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe a crime was committed.
The decision by the Justice Department to file a criminal complaint against two former senior FBI officials over testimony they gave three years ago so close to the midterm elections has raised eyebrows among former prosecutors and other federal officials.
Criminal complaints in felony cases are typically reserved for more exigent circumstances, such as ongoing threats to public safety or national security. And Justice Department guidelines and norms have typically urged prosecutors to avoid taking overt investigative steps on politically sensitive cases so close to a national election.
Prosecutors filing an unsworn and unsigned superseding complaint overnight is likely to raise further questions about whether the case is politically motivated.
"What is going on at the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office? In the middle of the night, the government filed an unsigned and unsworn complaint attempting to fix the issues with their original charge against Ms. Floris and adding a new charge just as meritless as the first one," said Floris' legal team in a statement provided to CBS News.
"In our combined decades of DOJ service, we have never seen or even heard of something like this being filed," the lawyers said. "That's because the public lodging of criminal charges must be authorized by the grand jury, a judge, or the defendant herself. Here, the government has taken that power for itself in a desperate attempt to delay our client's right to challenge the charges in court and litigate this case in the media, rather than the courtroom. We have asked to address this outrageous government conduct against a decorated public servant at today's court hearing."
The charges center on testimony that Floris and Benavides gave a congressional committee on July 19, 2023 and September 28, 2023, respectively.
The superseding complaint alleges the defendants "knowingly and willfully provided materially false statements to the Committee about their respective awareness of and
involvement in the FBI's investigations into Hunter Biden, and thereby corruptly obstructed, and impeded and endeavored to influence, obstruct, and impede the due proper administration of the law."
The complaint is focused on statements they made in testimony concerning their roles on the Foreign Influence Task Force, and one of its counterintelligence operations known as "Round River," which was focused on collecting derogatory informant reporting on, among other things, Hunter Biden, to flag the reporting as Russian disinformation" ahead of the 2020 election.
Floris served as the deputy assistant director of the FITF from mid-2019 through mid-2022, while Benavides served as its section chief from mid-2019 through the 2020 election
The complaint alleges that the defendants made false statements in their testimony "for the purpose of minimizing or concealing FITF's engagement with, and communications about, the Hunter Biden investigations and to impede the Congressional investigation."