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U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui, who previously apologized to a man accused of attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump, rebuked the Justice Department on Tuesday over its attempt to bring new obstruction charges against two former FBI officials without first securing judicial approval.
Former FBI officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides were arrested last week after the Department of Justice accused the duo of misrepresenting their involvement in investigations concerning former President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, in statements to Congress.
Hours before prosecutors were scheduled to defend their original allegations at a preliminary hearing, where the government must establish probable cause, the DOJ filed a superseding criminal complaint seeking to add new charges against the former officials. The new complaint sought to add felony obstruction allegations against the former officials while softening some of the language prosecutors had used to describe their involvement in the Hunter Biden investigations.
Faruqui sharply criticized the DOJ for filing an unsigned and unsworn criminal complaint in the middle of the night without first obtaining judicial approval.
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Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui speaks before a debate between incarcerated students and James Madison University students on the topic of abolishing life without parole at Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, DC on November 22, 2024.( (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
“I think they should have filed nothing,” Faruqui said, according to reports from inside the courtroom. “They never had complaints filed on their record that are unsigned, waiting for a judge to make a probable cause finding. I think that it is inappropriate and harms the defendant. I’m frustrated that I got it in the middle of the night, but I’m much more concerned that it’s filed on the public record.”
“Why today on this one case have you changed the entire history of how you charge cases?” Faruqui asked the DOJ. “What is it? It appears that — it makes it look like the United States is afraid of me trying to find probable cause.”
John Borchert, a prosecutor from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., said it was the first time he had filed new charges against someone without going through judicial review.
Faruqui rejected the superseding complaint because prosecutors had not secured the required judicial authorization, allowing the preliminary hearing to proceed on the original allegations that Floris and Benavides lied to Congress. Floris’ lawyers argued that the changes in language between the two documents calls into question the factual basis of the DOJ’s case.
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Hunter Biden and former FBI official Nikki Loris. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) (AP Photo/Eric Thayer) ((AP Photo/Susan Walsh) (AP Photo/Eric Thayer))
In the superseding complaint, prosecutors described Benavides and Floris as having been “involved in” the Foreign Influence Task Force’s work concerning Hunter Biden, a softer characterization than the original complaint’s suggestion that they had been at the “center” of those activities. Floris, who was previously said to have been involved in “scores of conversations” related to Biden’s son is now only accused of participating in “conversations.”
In what may have been a reference to the recently unsealed charges against former FBI Director James Comey, Faruqui said that moving on a superseding complaint without a probable cause finding “would be like charging someone by information … but in a complaint context.”
“If you want a superseding complaint, like every other case that’s happened in this district, we will have a judge make a probable cause finding,” the judge said. “Not send me something in the middle of the night and expect that it gets done.”
Faruqui has previously faced criticism from conservatives over his support for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, criticism of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and positions on pretrial detention. He also drew backlash after apologizing to Cole Allen, the man accused of attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump at the 2026 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, and criticizing the government’s use of five-point restraints against him.
“To me, it’s extremely disturbing that he was put in five-point restraints, a person with no criminal history,” the judge said about Allen at a hearing earlier this year. “It’s troubling. I never heard of one Jan. 6 defendant who was put in five-point restraints or in a safe cell. If the only way to keep him safe is the most punitive thing, that’s a problem.”
The DOJ has also been questioned for charging via complaint rather than through a grand jury, a procedural shortcut usually reserved for imminent threats to public safety.
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Critics have questioned the timing of the charges, with midterm elections being just days away when news of the two former officials’ arrests broke.
Floris’ lawyers have similarly argued that the timing and content of the charges are meant to engineer publicity.
“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,” said Floris’ legal team in a statement provided to CBS News.
“In our combined decades of DOJ service, we have never seen or even heard of something like this being filed,” they went on. “That’s because the public lodging of criminal charges must be authorized by the grand jury, a judge, or the defendant herself. Here, the government has taken that power for itself in a desperate attempt to delay our client’s right to challenge the charges in court and litigate this case in the media, rather than the courtroom. We have asked to address this outrageous government conduct against a decorated public servant at today’s court hearing.”
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Legal teams for Floris and Benavides, as well as the DOJ, did not respond to requests for comment when reached by Fox News Digital on Tuesday.