Federal judge strikes down DOJ's midnight filing in case against former FBI officials

U.S. Magistrate Zia Faruqui, presiding in Washington's federal court, dismissed the superseding complaint that added an obstruction charge, saying it lacked the required judicial sign-off finding probable cause.

"It is not our court's practice — and I think it is appropriately not our practice — that unsigned complaints are filed on the docket," Faruqui said. He later asked prosecutors: "I want to know why the United States is reticent or averse to putting before a probable cause determination that you must believe is righteous. Why today on this one case have you changed the entire history of how you charge cases?"

The incident is an embarrassing setback for the Justice Department, which has undertaken several splashy, politically charged investigative actions ahead of next week's midterm elections. The original false-statements charges, announced Friday, accuse Floris and Benavides of denying contemporaneous knowledge of the laptop and of participating in internal FBI conversations about it while testifying before lawmakers in 2023.

The two were leaders of the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force, established during the first Trump administration to counter influence campaigns by Russia and other nations. The task force was disbanded in February 2025 by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Prosecutors added the obstruction charge hours before Tuesday's preliminary hearing, alleging the officials' false statements impeded a congressional investigation into the Biden family. Lawyers for Floris sharply criticized the move in a statement: "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."

They added, "In our combined decades of DOJ service, we have never seen or even heard of something like this being filed."

Defense lawyers plan to challenge the case, including by highlighting that the charges were brought via a criminal complaint signed by a magistrate rather than a grand-jury indictment. The Justice Department has struggled in high-profile cases to secure indictments from grand juries in Washington.