Judge refuses to endorse superseding complaint against former FBI officials

Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui on Tuesday declined to sign a superseding criminal complaint that prosecutors filed overnight against former FBI officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides. The new filing added obstruction and attempted obstruction of a congressional proceeding to the original allegation that the two gave false statements to the House Judiciary Committee in 2023 about investigations involving Hunter Biden.

"I am not going to bless it as a superseding complaint," Faruqui said, noting that prosecutors had not first obtained a judge’s finding of probable cause before submitting the document.

The judge emphasized that criminal complaints typically require a judge’s signature and are used for swift actions such as arrest warrants, whereas conduct alleged to have occurred months earlier is usually pursued through a grand-jury indictment. He warned that the case should be presented to a grand jury, as is standard practice.

Prosecutors in the office of D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro had filed the complaint hours before a scheduled preliminary hearing on the original charge. The filing included a typed signature block with Faruqui’s name but lacked his personal signature.

Floris’s defense team criticized the filing in an emailed statement, describing it as an unsigned, unsworn complaint submitted “in the middle of the night” and alleging that the government was attempting to delay the defendants’ right to contest the charges in court.

"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," the attorneys wrote.

The original complaint, made public last Friday, led to the arrest of Floris and Benavides, who were subsequently released. Under federal rules, prosecutors must secure an indictment within 30 days of an arrest or risk dismissal of the case.