Oversight Project Applauds Trump Administration for Holding FBI Officials Accountable for Lying to Congress About Hunter Biden Probe

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 26, 2026

Washington, D.C.–The Oversight Project welcomes the very important news that the Trump administration, the Justice Department, and FBI Director Kash Patel are finally holding weaponized FBI officials accountable. Federal prosecutors have charged former FBI Deputy Assistant Director Nikki Floris and former FBI Section Chief Bradley Benavides with making materially false statements to the House Judiciary Committee about the FBI Foreign Influence Task Force's role in the Hunter Biden investigations. Both surrendered Friday and appeared in federal court in Washington, D.C. For years, officials who weaponized the Bureau against the American people faced no consequences. Although this is a good start, justice will not be fully served until FBI conspirators are charged with crimes related to their actual conspiracies against the United States and not merely for lying to Congress.

Floris, already notorious for claiming to be running a “shadow government,” directed the worst of the FBI’s ideologically weaponized sections, the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), during the period of its worst abuses (mid-2019 to mid-2022).

According to FBI Director Kash Patel, both officials "testified that the FITF was not involved in the Hunter Biden investigations." Prosecutors say they lied.

Under Floris’ direction, the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force ran Operation Round River, a historically unparalleled coup attempt. Round River posed a grave threat to the future of our Republic in ways the United States has never seen. It was a conspiracy that violated the civil rights of US citizens at an industrial scale and is unquestionably the most grievous example of election interference in United States history.

The FITF and Round River:

  • Purposely ignored the 40+ FBI confidential human sources who reported on Biden corruption.
  • Had countless US citizen social media accounts with zero foreign nexus deplatformed due to First Amendment speech.
  • Censored the Hunter Biden laptop story.
  • Together, Floris and Benavides sabotaged Senator Grassley/Johnson with a fake brief that contained no FBI intelligence. This brief was leaked to the media to falsely taint the investigation of Biden corruption.
  • Falsely branded numerous conservatives such as Grassley, Johnson, Graham, Jordan and Fox News as "conduits" of Russian disinformation. Floris's task force signed off with "no objection."

The Oversight Project has been exposing Floris, the Foreign Influence Task Force, and Round River for years. In 2023, we posted a tweet thread on the FBI’s August 2020 briefings of Sens. Grassley and Johnson explaining the FITF’s role in election interference. In June 2025, we referred former FBI director Christopher Wray to the DOJ for criminal charges over false and misleading testimony to Congress, including on the FBI’s handling of 2020 Chinese election-interference intelligence. Floris, who routinely briefed Wray on election threats, was a central figure in the referral. In July 2026, we published a detailed investigation into Floris’ tenure atop the FITF and laid out Operation Round River.

The charges also come days after the Oversight Project released new records from Special Counsel Jack Smith's office. Obtained in Oversight Project v. DOJ, No. 25-cv-220 (D.D.C.), the records document at least six filter team breaches that contradict Smith's sworn Senate testimony. The pattern is the same: officials who weaponized federal law enforcement went before Congress and told a different story under oath.

Oversight Project President Mike Howell gave this statement:

“Americans have been craving accountability for so many of the weaponized actions of their own government. These indictments relate to a fact pattern that the Oversight Project has been zealously and publicly pursuing for years. I am glad to see that this has advanced to the indictment stage, and the entire Oversight Project will be monitoring developments as it proceeds through the judicial system.”

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Tweet thread from July 7, 2023 on FITF: https://x.com/ItsYourGov/status/1677143606811844610

Tweet thread from July 17, 2026 on Nikki Floris, FITF, and Operation Round River: https://x.com/ItsYourGov/status/2077953982715076700

Tweet thread from August 12, 2026 on Operation Round River: https://x.com/ItsYourGov/status/2087614603693879710

Read Mike Howell’s op-ed in Real Clear Politics here: The Right Way to De-Weaponize the FBI

Read the documents on Jack Smith’s office we recently released here: https://docdepot.itsyourgov.org/document/a906f67bca091a0673445173078c7066

Senator Grassley’s press release: https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-statement-on-former-fbi-officials-charged-with-lying-to-congress