US Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui dismissed the criminal case against former senior FBI officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, who were accused of lying to Congress about their involvement in an investigation into Hunter Biden's laptop. The ruling was blunt: insufficient evidence, a rushed timeline, and what the judge called unmistakable "weaponization" of the justice system. The charges alleged that Floris and Benavides misled Congress in 2023 about their knowledge of a laptop the DOJ says Hunter Biden dropped at a Delaware tech shop in 2019. An FBI agent who worked the case testified that the investigation began last July under FBI Director Kash Patel's direction — placing it squarely within the Trump administration's broader effort to relitigate the 2020 election's handling of the Biden laptop story. Faruqui did not mince words from the bench. "I will not bury my head in the sand and pretend I cannot read a calendar," he said, flagging the case's proximity to midterm elections. "I will not lobotomize myself that way." He labeled the prosecution's conduct as something that "cannot be described as anything other than weaponization" — a term typically deployed by politicians, now being used by a sitting federal judge to describe the DOJ's own behavior. The procedural record compounded the damage. During a preliminary hearing, Faruqui noted the DOJ filed an amended complaint adding a charge without first clearing it with the court — a step the judge said he had never seen skipped in his experience. This is not a technicality. Filing charges without judicial clearance signals either incompetence or an attempt to pressure defendants before the court can intervene. The case echoes a pattern familiar from Trump's political orbit: the allegation that the FBI suppressed damaging Biden family information before the 2020 election. Whether or not that claim has merit, the DOJ's execution here was so flawed that the judge's dismissal effectively validates the defense argument that the prosecution was retaliatory rather than evidence-driven. The DOJ retains the option of pursuing a grand jury indictment, but Faruqui's ruling creates a significant headwind. A federal judge publicly calling your case weaponized and procedurally deficient poisons the well for any future jury pool and hands the defense a powerful appellate record. The department now faces a choice between doubling down on a case a judge has already flagged as political or quietly letting it die. The structural concern extends beyond these two defendants. When the justice system is used to settle political scores — whether against Trump allies or Biden-era officials — the institution's credibility erodes regardless of which party holds the lever. Faruqui's ruling is a rare instance of a judge saying so explicitly from the bench.
