Nikki Floris, the former FBI official who wrote during the 2020 campaign that she was “basically running a shadow government” inside the bureau, spent this week in a Washington courtroom fighting federal charges that she lied to Congress about the FBI’s work on Hunter Biden.
Floris, 46, of Alexandria, Va., ran the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force as a deputy assistant director from mid-2019 to mid-2022. She and the task force’s former section chief, Bradley Benavides, 56, surrendered on Oct. 23 and are each charged with making false statements to Congress, according to the Justice Department. Each faces up to five years in prison.
What she told Congress, and what the records show
In 2023, Floris told the House Judiciary Committee she took part in no Hunter Biden discussions at the task force. Prosecutors say she discussed the Hunter Biden investigations regularly for more than a year and “personally participated in scores of conversations about Hunter Biden, including many that were in writing,” ZeroHedge reported from the complaint.
On Oct. 15, 2020, the day after the New York Post published the laptop story, Floris forwarded an NBC reporter’s inquiry to FBI leadership, according to the complaint as reported by the Daily Caller. The FBI had held the laptop since December 2019. Benavides told Congress he learned about the laptop from a Wikipedia article. Prosecutors say he discussed it with FBI officials before the 2020 election.
The “shadow government” line comes from FBI chat records President Trump declassified in July. According to the Daily Caller, it came as an official preparing the bureau’s part of the President’s Daily Brief asked about a September 2020 tip that China had exported thousands of driver’s licenses to create fraudulent mail-in ballots. Floris answered that the tip had been retracted. The other official replied, “Do what you have to do :)” The tip was never investigated, and a draft was deleted in late October 2020.
In court
On Tuesday, Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui struck an obstruction charge prosecutors had added in an unsigned complaint filed after midnight, Fortune reported. The original false-statements charges stand. During a break, Floris was seen crying in the courthouse hallway, LifeZette reported. The probable-cause hearing was set to resume Wednesday.
Nikki Floris, the former FBI official arrested for lying to Congress about the Hunter Biden laptop and allegedly running a “shadow government,” was spotted bawling in court today. Keep the tears coming you, traitor bitch. https://t.co/4A1WWnWH0H
— Stacy is Right (@PoliticalStacy) October 28, 2026
Her lawyers say “the DOJ has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts.” Both defendants deny wrongdoing and are presumed innocent.
“Lying to Congress by anyone strikes at the heart of our democratic system,” said U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro. FBI Director Kash Patel said “weaponization will never be tolerated at this FBI” and that the bureau has dismantled the CR-15 squad.
Not an isolated case
The Floris case is one of several. The Foreign Influence Task Force was disbanded in February 2025. On Monday, a judge unsealed new Espionage Act charges against former FBI Director James Comey over a 2016 leak to the New York Times, the third time in about a year the department has charged him, The Federalist reported.
Understand, she knows there’s no fancy lawyering that’s going to prevent what is about to happen to her. The documentary trails she and her co-conspirators left behind themselves….it’s…..well it’s just too much. They left too much evidence behind. The one guarantee Floris had – like every member of the shadow government had – was that even if they were forced to do some PRETTY OBVIOUS SHIT, they were going to BE OK. They would be protected. Nothing would happen to them. They could pull off a COVID Plandemic, do a J5 pipe bomb false flag, do a J6 Fedsurrection operation to entrap/prosecute/imprison hundreds of innocent Americans… …AND NOTHING WOULD HAPPEN TO THEM. The shadow government was **completely secure and in control**. **HOW** could anything ever happen to them? You gotta understand…these last 20 months, man. Sweet baby Jesus…they never saw any of this shit coming at them. I mean, they know they missed him in Butler. They know they failed to imprison him before the 2024 election got there, or at least keep him off the ballot. They knew they were in for a rough time since they failed to stop him from coming back…. BUT **THIS?!** Holy shit, THIS? That he’d come back with a DREAM TEAM and launch a spectacularly SUCCESSFUL HOSTILE TAKEOVER of that EXECUTIVE BRANCH and it’s AGENCIES? FUCK NO, they didn’t see THAT coming. One by one by one, he’s ripped them from the shadow government’s grasping hands so violently and forcefully their fingers are still stinging: 1. The NSC 2. The DOJ 3. The FBI 4. The Treasury 5. The State Dept. 6. HHS 7. The US Military 8. DHS/ICE 9. Education 10. Most of the intel agencies He took it all AWAY FROM THEM and then the blond-haired son-of-a-bitch started SHUTTING DOWN their drug and human trafficking networks all ‘cross the fruited plain, shutting down the border and reasserting control away from the shadow government’s cartel business partners. And if THAT wasn’t bad enough, the insufferable prick and that smarmy Bessent continued on SHUTTING DOWN ALL THEIR MONEY LAUNDERING SCHEMES OUT OF THE US TREASURY! One by one by one the US Shadow Government franchises hidden fraud revenue streams are being exposed, cut, shut down, prosecuted. And now its reached the stage that Trump and his people at the DOJ are **comfortable** sending a massive fuckin’ signal that the next step has arrived. After taking over. After exposing. After shutting down. PROSECUTION. The prosecution phase has arrived. Nothing is gonna stop this. These people can cry all they want. They were making FUCKING WAR on their country in league with criminal foreign entities. They deserve every fucking thing that is about to happen to them. And you can quote me on that.
— Brian Cates – Political Columnist & Pundit (@drawandstrike) October 28, 2026
The bottom line
For years, officials inside the FBI behaved as if their decisions would never be examined. A task force built to guard elections against foreign interference was, prosecutors say, deep inside the Hunter Biden matter during the 2020 campaign while the laptop story was being treated as possible Russian disinformation. A tip about Chinese ballot fraud was dropped without investigation. And the official at the center of it put the words “shadow government” in writing, apparently confident no one outside the bureau would ever read them.
They did not expect a president who would declassify their chats, an FBI director who would turn over their emails, or a Justice Department willing to bring charges. The case against Floris rests on her own written record, which is why it is dangerous for her and why it matters for the country. Officials who misled Congress about what the FBI did in 2020 should answer for it in court.
That makes discipline at the Justice Department essential. An unsigned complaint filed after midnight hands the defense an easy argument and a sympathetic judge an easy target. Prosecutors have the documents. They should take this case to a grand jury, try it by the book and let the evidence speak.