'What’s going on?' Lawyers demand answers as Trump moves to subvert courts

On Tuesday, after the Department of Justice went on an overnight spree filing charges against two former FBI agents targeted by President Donald Trump and his allies, attorneys for the accused warned that the administration’s move effectively subverts the courts. The FBI agents have been hit with charges linked to the Hunter Biden laptop case, but their lawyers note the extraordinarily unusual way the government has gone about circumventing the normal legal processes.

The defendants in question are former FBI agents Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, who have been charged with lying to Congress about their roles investigating the son of President Joe Biden. The Trump government’s claim suggests that the two downplayed their knowledge of the laptop case, which has been a MAGA fixation ever since the final days of the 2020 election, when it was alleged that the computer’s hard drive contained evidence of foreign business entanglements. While these charges were filed on Monday night, by Tuesday morning, it was reported that the DOJ had filed a superseding complaint, tacking on charges of obstruction of justice and amending previous charges. But according to attorneys for Floris, the government is making a clear attempt to sidestep accepted legal procedures.

“What is going on at the DC US Attorney’s Office?” asked the lawyers in a statement. “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. In our combined decades of DOJ service, we have never seen or even heard of something like this being filed. 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.”

According to ABC News, these allegations are “the latest in a series of splashy and politically charged investigative actions the Justice Department has undertaken in the run-up to next week’s midterm elections.” As the outlet elaborates, “Defense lawyers are expected to challenge the case at a preliminary hearing Tuesday in Washington's federal court, including by highlighting the unusual fact that the ex-FBI officials were charged via a criminal complaint signed by a magistrate judge rather than an indictment voted on by a grand jury. The Justice Department is thought to have repeatedly struggled in high-profile cases to persuade grand juries in the nation’s capital to return indictments.”

Since returning to office in 2025, Trump has suffered several high-profile legal setbacks in his quest to target his opponents and enemies with the DOJ, including failed attempts to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose cases were either dismissed by judges or rejected by grand juries. The department has also faced unusually high rates of dropped criminal cases, particularly against protesters and those targeted with allegations of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. What’s more, federal courts repeatedly rejected DOJ lawsuits seeking access to state voter rolls, finding little legal basis for the administration’s claims.