Judge berates DOJ attorney in court over new charge filed against former FBI officials

A federal magistrate judge in Washington threw out a freshly filed charge against two former FBI officials, ruling that the Justice Department had gone about announcing it in an improper and unprecedented way. Judge Zia M. Faruqui struck an obstruction count that prosecutors had tacked onto a superseding complaint against Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, who were arrested the previous week on accusations of lying to Congress about what they knew regarding an investigation tied to Hunter Biden's laptop, according to NBC News.

The new complaint had been filed overnight without a signature from any officer or judge. Prosecutor John Borchert conceded nothing like it had happened before and proposed having it signed during the hearing. Faruqui refused, saying he believed the prosecutors acted in good faith but worried the system was being misused by people higher up. Floris's lawyer, Mary Dohrmann, called the case a political football, and her legal team denounced the filing as outrageous.

The hearing on the original charge went on. FBI Special Agent Bryan Witt testified that the probe began after Director Kash Patel sent a letter to the Kansas City office, that it was pushed aggressively, and that he feared it would look political.

Summarized by PolitiKool from NBC News’s reporting. Read the full story at NBC News →