For years, the people who buried the Hunter Biden laptop story never faced a single consequence. That changed this week, and one of them could not hold it together. Former FBI official Nikki Floris broke down in tears outside a federal courtroom in Washington on Tuesday, the New York Post reports, during a preliminary hearing on charges that she lied to Congress about the laptop.
According to the Post, Floris “was seen weeping in a courthouse hallway during a break in the probable cause hearing.” She and fellow former FBI official Bradley Benavides self-surrendered last week. Both face up to five years in prison if convicted of lying to the House Judiciary Committee in 2023 about their role in discrediting stories about the president’s son. Both served on the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force when they allegedly made the false statements.
Prosecutors, citing internal FBI messages, emails and testimony from bureau employees, allege that Floris and Benavides frequently discussed Hunter Biden and his laptop in the run-up to the 2020 election. That includes helping with press inquiries after the Post’s Oct. 14, 2020 laptop story, as the false “Russian disinformation” narrative took hold. Then they went before Congress. Floris testified she had no knowledge of the laptop. Benavides claimed he first learned about it on “Wikipedia.”
Let that sink in. The government’s own witness, FBI Special Agent Bryan Witt, was not buying it. “It’d be common sense to remember that stuff,” Witt said under cross-examination, adding that Benavides’ testimony contradicted “tangible” evidence such as chat logs and direct message transcripts. Witt did acknowledge he had no direct evidence that Benavides’ claim was intentionally false.
The defense is already running the familiar play. Floris’ attorney, Margaret Donovan, tried to get Witt to call the case a “witch hunt,” pointing out that President Trump referenced the pair in a speech. Witt said he was “concerned” the investigation “would be viewed as political,” but refused to use the defense’s phrase and said he was told to “investigate potential crimes.”
The hearing was not a clean win for the Justice Department. US Magistrate Zia Faruqui made no ruling after a full day of testimony, and he struck down a superseding complaint filed overnight that tried to add an obstruction charge without a judge’s sign-off. “Why today upend the entire history of how we charge cases?” Faruqui asked.
As Townhall’s Matt Vespa put it, “the process is the punishment.” The laptop laid out the Biden family’s cash-for-access business, including Hunter’s $50,000-a-month seat on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Americans were told it was a Russian plot weeks before they voted.
This is a window into what happens when the people who ran that cover-up finally have to answer for it under oath and in front of a judge. The tears came easily. The truth took six years.
Source: townhall.com