“Two ex-FBI officials charged with lying about investigation into Hunter Biden’s laptop”, 23 October 2026 (Photo via The Guardian — the original report)
As it ran on the front
I can't put a new fan belt on the car this week. Fourteen dollars for the belt, eighty-five for the install if I don't do it myself in the driveway with a flashlight in my teeth. That's a number I can check — it's taped to the invoice on my workbench, and the part number on the box matches the part number in the manual. I bring it up because this is a column about numbers, and that's the only kind I trust: the kind where you can put the box next to the receipt and see if they match.
Here's what doesn't match, as best I can tell from this month's wire.…
…(cont) The Justice Department filed charges against James Comey for a third time, the Times reported on the 27th, over a 2016 leak the FBI already investigated once before. The new filing added counts. A third filing, with new counts, on a leak the government already closed once.
Before that, on October 9th, a grand jury began hearing the case the department built against Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Meadows aide, over her 2022 testimony to the January 6th committee. On October 27th, the grand jury declined to indict her. Eighteen days, start to finish, and the people in that room looked at what the government had and chose not to sign their name to it.
On October 23rd, two former FBI counterintelligence officials, Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, were charged with lying to Congress about their part in the 2020 investigation into Hunter Biden's laptop. They surrendered that morning and stood for their first court appearance the same day. One of them wept in the courthouse hallway afterward. That's not me editorializing; that's what the Post put in print.
Then the department added a second charge against the same two people — obstruction, on top of the first — and the judge hearing it called the new charge, for the record, "a sideshow on top of a sideshow." I don't know many judges who reach for a phrase like that twice in a career. I looked. I couldn't find one.
This week, the lawyers representing Floris and Benavides did what defense lawyers generally do last, not first: they told the wire services that the evidence behind the case doesn't hold up, and neither do the motives behind it. That's the CBS story, dated today. The strength of the evidence. The motives behind the charges. Not my words. Theirs, on the record, about a case the government is still trying to make.
In my garage, I don't put a part in the car until I've checked the number on the box against the number in the manual, because a part that doesn't match costs you the tow twice — once for the part that didn't fit, once for hauling it back. The government has brought four cases this month tied to one administration's list of grievances: Comey, Hutchinson, the first charge against Floris and Benavides, and the second. The fourth is the one the lawyers stood up this week to say doesn't match the number in the manual either.
That's the only number I'm giving you today, and I'm giving it to you once: three prosecutions, zero convictions. A fourth is cracking while the lawyers for the accused are still the only ones standing up to talk about it.
Hold on — one more thing before you go. The CBS story doesn't quote the government answering the defense's doubts about the evidence. It quotes the defense raising them. So which side, in this case, this week, is the one doing the explaining — the government that brought the charges, or the lawyers for the people it charged?
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“They've run three cases this month on people who testified or did their jobs, and all three came back empty — a grand jury said no, a judge called one a sideshow, and now the fourth is falling apart in open court too. That's not prosecutors working through tough cases, that's the government spending public money chasing the same list of names and losing every time. When the score is zero convictions in four tries, the question is who at Justice keeps signing off on the next one.”
“Look, prosecutors bring hard cases, that's the job — a grand jury declining to indict isn't an exoneration, it's just one stage of the process working as designed. The obstruction charge, the fresh one, that's just diligence, following the evidence wherever it — wait, the judge called it a sideshow on top of a sideshow? I didn't say that. That's not in my notes.”
The DOJ disbanded its crypto enforcement team in April 2025 and ordered inconsistent investigations closed - while the president's family runs a crypto business CNBC, 8 April 2025 (Blanche memo)
Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, two former senior FBI counterintelligence officials, are facing criminal charges for allegedly making false statements to Congress during their 2023 testimony on the Hunter Biden laptop probe. CBS News' Sarah Lynch reports.
The DOJ disbanded its crypto enforcement team in April 2025 and ordered inconsistent investigations closed - while the president's family runs a crypto business CNBC, 8 April 2025 (Blanche memo)
Contents of laptop of Joe Biden’s son were part of a bizarre saga in the final weeks of 2020 presidential election Two former FBI intelligence officials who specialized in foreign election interference were charged on Friday with making false statements about their roles in investigating the origins of Hunter Biden ’s laptop in the…
Defense attorneys for two former FBI counterintelligence officials accused of lying to Congress raised doubts about the strength of the evidence and the motives behind the charges.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.
