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The Justice Department has charged two former senior FBI officials who it says misled lawmakers about what they knew of the bureau’s Hunter Biden probe, laptop included, just over a week before the midterms.

Getting into it: Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, who led the FBI’s now-disbanded Foreign Influence Task Force, are each charged with a single count of lying to Congress over testimony they gave to the House Judiciary Committee in 2023. When lawmakers asked Floris if there was “ever a discussion at the FITF about Hunter Biden” or if she had “any involvement in the Hunter Biden investigation,” she said no to both. Benavides told the committee he learned the FBI had an ongoing investigation tied to the laptop by reading its Wikipedia page.

But prosecutors say internal emails tell a different story. According to the 27-page criminal complaint, Floris sent Benavides a copy of Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson’s September 2020 report on Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, and the two discussed the New York Post’s laptop story the following month. Prosecutors also say Floris sat in on briefings and messaged colleagues about where the investigation stood, laptop included, while Benavides kept in touch with the agents working the Hunter Biden case and met with them before briefing lawmakers. The complaint says the false statements let both “escape further questioning” from the committee in the lead-up to the 2024 election.

Both turned themselves in Friday and appeared before Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui in DC, who said it was odd to bring the case by complaint over conduct that’s “quite old,” and pointed out that both have “sparkling backgrounds” in law enforcement.

In a statement, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said, “Lying to Congress by anyone strikes at the heart of our democratic system, but when senior FBI agents lie to Congress believing they are above the law, it’s time to bring the hammer of justice down on them.” FBI Director Kash Patel added that “weaponization will never be tolerated at this FBI,” and said one of them had privately claimed to be “running a shadow government” during the 2020 election, a reference to Floris in messages Trump declassified in July.

Floris’ attorneys called her a “patriot” and said “it’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election.” Benavides’ lawyer called the case “a transparently political complaint.”