Two former senior FBI officials were criminally charged Friday with lying to Congress about the bureau's investigation into Hunter Biden's laptop, in a case Justice Department leaders cast as overdue accountability and defense lawyers blasted as politically timed.

Nikki Floris, 46, a former intelligence analyst in charge at the FBI's Washington Field Office, and Bradley Benavides, 56, a former deputy assistant director in the bureau's Counterintelligence Division, each face one count of making false statements, according to a criminal complaint filed in Washington, D.C., and reported by CBS News. Both appeared in court Friday.

Prosecutors allege Floris lied in congressional testimony on July 19, 2023, and Benavides in testimony that September, with both statements aimed at concealing the role the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force played in the Hunter Biden investigations — and, prosecutors say, at obstructing the congressional inquiry itself, per NPR.

Patel and Pirro announce the case

FBI Director Kash Patel and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced the charges together, with Patel saying documentary evidence, contemporaneous communications and witness accounts all contradict the pair's sworn testimony. Neither Floris nor Benavides has been indicted by a grand jury; both were charged by criminal complaint, and a preliminary hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, according to PBS NewsHour.

SHE'S A PATRIOT WHO SERVED HER COUNTRY.

That's how Floris's attorneys described their client, according to NPR, rejecting the allegations against her. Benavides' lawyers have also pushed back on the case.

The magistrate judge overseeing the initial proceedings called it "rare" for the government to bring charges over testimony this old — more than three years after the statements in question were made. The timing, weeks before the November midterms, has drawn its own scrutiny; wire reports note the case lands amid a string of Justice Department actions this year that critics describe as politically charged, while the FBI and U.S. Attorney's office frame it strictly as a case about lying to Congress.

The Foreign Influence Task Force was created inside the FBI to counter foreign disinformation campaigns around U.S. elections. Republican lawmakers have long argued the task force was misused in 2020 to steer the bureau's public posture toward downplaying the laptop's authenticity — a claim the FBI has denied in the past, though Hunter Biden's own attorneys eventually acknowledged the device was genuine.

Both defendants are due back in court Tuesday for a preliminary hearing, where a judge will consider whether the case proceeds toward a grand jury indictment. Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department has signaled whether additional current or former officials could face similar charges.