One of the two disgraced former senior FBI officials arrested this week for allegedly lying to Congress once admitted to having effectively run a “shadow government” within the first Trump administration.
Nikki Cole Floris, who served as the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s now-defunct Foreign Influence Task Force, made the admission “on record,” according to FBI Director Kash Patel.
She’s “on record privately claiming to be ‘running a shadow government’ during the 2020 election,” Patel revealed in a post published to X on Friday.
It was the same post in which he announced the arrest of both Floris and Bradley Benavides, who served as the FITF’s section chief.
Two former senior FBI officials, Nikki Cole Floris and Bradley Benavides, were taken into custody today on charges of allegedly lying to Congress about their involvement in the FBI’s investigations into Hunter Biden.
The charges stem from an ongoing investigation into the since-dissolved FBI Foreign Influence Task Force…
— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) October 23, 2026
The two were arrested for “allegedly lying to Congress about their involvement in the FBI’s investigations into Hunter Biden,” the eldest son of former President Joe Biden, according to Patel’s social media post.
The two have specifically been accused of using the FITF to suppress legitimate, factual reporting on Biden’s infamous laptop.
According to the New York Post, the two later lied to Congress in 2023 by claiming they knew nothing about the laptop.
However, an affidavit filed in federal court revealed that the pair discussed the laptop in “briefings, emails, instant messages, and meetings” multiple times before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post reported.
The outlet, which has reviewed the affidavit, added that they falsely wrote the laptop story off as Russian disinformation.
Affidavit is out on the case against Nikki Cole Floris and Bradley Benavides, formerly with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, for lying to Congress.
Both claimed ignorance as to the Hunter Biden investigation and the FBI’s attempt to brand coverage its incriminating contents as “Russian disinformation” a few weeks before the 2020 election…
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) October 23, 2026
The two, Floris and Benavides, dismissed the laptop story despite the FBI having reportedly previously verified that the laptop was real.
In addition, the two deep state operatives later held a “confidential” briefing with the U.S. Senate in which “they warned against trusting reports of Biden family corruption,” according to the New York Post.
Their remarks to the Senate were reportedly later leaked to the press, which subsequently used them to justify also suppressing the story.
Do you think the FBI has acted fairly in their investigation of Hunter Biden?
According to the New York Post, Floris and Benavides were also part of an operation called Round River.
In a letter written last month to Patel, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan said that Round River “categorized prominent Republicans and conservative organizations as ‘conduits’ of Russian disinformation.”
The operation also simultaneously portrayed former President Biden and his son Hunter as “targets” of this alleged disinformation, according to Jordan.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan tells Just the News the recently revealed FBI operation known as Round River was an effort to obstruct congressional investigators from getting to the truth about Democrat corruption and to interfere in the 2020 election to help Joe Biden win. “It’s ridiculous what happened, and it’s just wrong,” he declared.
— D. Scott @eclipsethis2003 (@eclipsethis2003) August 15, 2026
As all this transpired in 2020, something else happened, according to the New York Post — Elvis Chan, another FITF member, warned social media companies that Russia was preparing to launch a disinformation campaign centered on the Bidens.
As for Floris and Benavides, they each face a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison if convicted.
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