D.C. Judge Dismisses Case Against FBI Official Who Bragged About Running ‘Shadow Government’
A federal judge tossed a criminal complaint against two former FBI officials who falsely told Congress that evidence of Biden family criminality stemmed from a Russian disinformation campaign, decrying "weaponization."
Emily Kopp · Nov 2, 2026 · 4 min read
A federal judge tossed a criminal complaint against two former FBI officials who falsely told Congress that evidence of Biden family criminality stemmed from a Russian disinformation campaign, decrying “weaponization.”
U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui complained that the Department of Justice had amended its criminal complaint and called the charges political given their proximity to the midterm election Tuesday, the Associated Press reported.
The Justice Department could still pursue a grand jury indictment, though it may not succeed in the liberal enclave of Washington, D.C.
“What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization,” Faruqui said, according to the AP. “I will not bury my head in the sand and pretend that I cannot read a calendar.”
Yet it appears the judge did not consult the 2020 calendar, as many of the actions that brought Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides under the scrutiny of law enforcement in the first place occurred in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Floris and her co-defendant Bradley Benavides have denied wrongdoing. Floris’s attorneys said in a statement last week that “the DOJ has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts.”
In the lead-up to that election, the senior FBI officials muddied factual and derogatory reporting about the Biden family by labeling it part and parcel of malign Russian influence, according to the federal government’s legal complaint and declassified documents.
The team ran an FBI operation codenamed “Round River,” the aim of which was to paint derogatory information about Biden, corruption and Ukraine as Russian disinformation. The so-called “Ukraine narrative” included information about the Biden family and Burisma, Hunter Biden, Mykola Zlochevsky, and Ukraine interference in the 2016 election.
Faruqui, the federal judge, noted that the investigation was opened a day after a July primetime speech by Trump about election security.