Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui sharply criticized federal prosecutors on Tuesday after refusing to sign a new criminal complaint filed against two former FBI officials. The dispute centers on an overnight filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Washington that added obstruction charges to the case involving Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides.
Faruqui stated that he would not approve the document as a superseding complaint. This decision came after Floris' legal team filed a motion arguing that the new complaint was legally deficient and submitted in bad faith. The judge indicated that if prosecutors wished to file a superseding complaint, they should have first sought a judicial finding of probable cause rather than presenting the document late at night.
The judge expressed surprise at the procedural approach taken by the office of D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro. He noted that it is not standard practice in his court for unsigned complaints to be entered into the docket. Faruqui questioned the prosecutors' interpretation of the law, asking why they had altered their historical methods of charging cases in this specific instance.
The superseding complaint, which was filed early Tuesday, featured a signature block with Faruqui's name typed out, but the judge had not personally signed the document. This filing occurred just hours before a scheduled preliminary hearing on the original complaint was set to begin.
The original complaint, made public the previous Friday, alleges that Floris and Benavides made false statements to the House Judiciary Committee in 2023 regarding their roles in investigations concerning Hunter Biden. Both former officials were arrested on Friday and have since been released. The new charges sought to add obstruction and attempted obstruction of a congressional proceeding to the existing counts.
Faruqui highlighted that cases involving conduct from several years ago are typically handled through grand jury indictments rather than criminal complaints. While an indictment requires a grand jury to evaluate evidence, a criminal complaint only needs a judge's signature and is often used for rapid arrests. The judge emphasized that this matter should proceed to a grand jury.
Under federal rules, prosecutors are generally required to secure an indictment within 30 days of an arrest to avoid the risk of the case being dismissed. Faruqui pointed out the unusual nature of charging a case based on 2023 testimony via a criminal complaint in October 2026.
Floris' attorneys criticized the government's conduct in a statement released Tuesday morning. They described the overnight filing as an unsigned and unsworn complaint intended to fix issues with the original charge while adding a new, meritless count. The lawyers noted that in their decades of service, they had never encountered such a filing, which they argued must be authorized by a grand jury, a judge, or the defendant.
The defense team argued that the government was attempting to delay their client's right to challenge the charges in court. They characterized the action as a desperate move to litigate the case in the media rather than the courtroom. Their motion to strike the complaint described the document as a serious abuse of the criminal charging process and a calculated effort to evade judicial scrutiny.
