Politics

Judge dismisses case against 2 ex-FBI officials in Hunter Biden probe

A federal magistrate judge on Monday dismissed a criminal complaint charging two former senior FBI counterintelligence officials with lying to Congress about their roles in the bureau’s Hunter Biden investigation, saying the politically charged case lacked evidence and appeared to be timed with the midterm election.
In a scathing, hour-long oral ruling, Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui rebuked the Justice Department and the FBI for what he called a “slapdash” case that lacked any probable cause that there was evidence Nikki Floris or Bradley Benavides had committed a crime.
“Without motive, without direct evidence, I have nothing,” he said. “It’s not close. It’s nothing.”
“I am deeply troubled by what has happened in this case,” Faruqui said. “What has transpired here can’t be described as anything other than weaponization.”
Although the complaint was dismissed, the Justice Department could still appeal Faruqui’s ruling to the chief judge or seek a grand jury indictment.
A Justice Department spokesperson said it “disagrees with the Magistrate’s decision, which remarkably appears to suggest that high-ranking government officials are immune from accountability for making materially false statements to Congress.”
“We are evaluating all options but cannot comment further on an ongoing criminal investigation,” the spokesperson said. “The Department’s actions will continue to be guided by the facts, the evidence, and the law — not politics.”
CBS News has also reached out to the FBI and the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office for comment.
Floris was a former top intelligence analyst in charge at the bureau’s Washington Field Office, while Benavides was the former deputy assistant director at the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. The two embraced outside the courtroom after the decision as Floris cried tears of relief.
They were flanked by numerous former senior Justice Department and FBI officials who had come to support them, including former Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll and Steve Jensen, the former head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office.
“This case should have never been brought,” said Margaret Donovan, one of Floris’ attorneys, in a statement to reporters outside the courthouse. “This was a slapdash complaint, spaghetti at the wall, Hunter Biden conspiracy fever dream. But facts still matter in a courtroom.”
The criminal case against Floris and Benavides has been highly unusual since it first came to light earlier this month.
Prosecutors charged the pair in a criminal complaint, a charging document that is generally only used in felony cases that pose exigent public safety or national security threats. Usually, prosecutors secure a grand jury indictment before filing charges.
After midnight on the eve of the court hearing’s first day last Tuesday, prosecutors used an unsigned and unsworn superseding complaint to try to add new charges of obstructing Congress — a maneuver the magistrate judge said was improper and unheard of.
Faruqui struck the superseding complaint from the record, saying it lacked proper judicial review. But he allowed the hearing on the original complaint to proceed in a marathon evidentiary proceeding with three days of testimony that culminated in Monday’s extraordinary decision.
Throughout those three days, FBI Special Agent Bryan Witt, who was assigned to help investigate the matter, candidly acknowledged to the court that the case had not been handled like any other in his career.
He testified that it was opened at the behest of FBI Director Kash Patel just one day after President Donald Trump gave a televised speech in July where he accused intelligence officials of engaging in a coverup to hide China’s interference in the 2020 election and ordered the Justice Department to pursue prosecutions. Throughout the investigation, senior officials including the FBI’s deputy directors and Patel himself checked on the progress.
Witt also acknowledged that he feared it might be viewed as political and that others in his FBI field office in Kansas City were concerned it was a witch hunt.
Faruqui, a former federal prosecutor himself, at one point also quoted aloud from the Justice Department Manual, which stipulates that prosecutors should not take overt investigative or prosecutorial steps intended to affect or influence the outcome of an election.
“Why did this have to be charged in October 2026?” he asked out loud, noting there was no concern with the statute of limitations expiring in the near future.
“There was simply no other event on the calendar, except for the midterm elections,” he said. He added that he refused to bury his head in the sand and pretend the timing was not an issue.
“I will not lobotomize myself in this way,” he added.
The case against Floris and Benavides hinged on testimony they had provided to the House Judiciary Committee in July and September 2023.
In particular, it focused on an FBI counterintelligence operation by the Foreign Influence Task Force known as “Round River,” which prosecutors said was focused on collecting “derogatory informant reporting on, among other things, Hunter Biden, to flag the reporting as Russian disinformation.”
Floris served as the deputy assistant director of the FITF from mid-2019 through mid-2022, while Benavides served as its section chief from mid-2019 through the 2020 election, according to the complaint.
In those roles, Floris and Benavides provided defensive briefings to Sens. Charles Grassley and Ron Johnson in August 2020, and this ultimately led the House Judiciary Committee to summon the pair to testify about three years later.
During the three-day hearing on the case, problems with the strength of the evidence and the lack of adequate investigation came to light.
In order to show probable cause in a false statements case, prosecutors must demonstrate that the defendants made false statements, that they did so knowingly and willfully, and that those statements were material.
Faruqui ticked through each of the three elements of the offense on Monday, finding that the government had failed to meet each threshold.
He compared and contrasted the government’s complaint with prior false statement cases where the elements of the offense had been met, citing the cases against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
“It’s clear to me the rushed investigation had a goal. It was a rush to charge — and that is a problem,” he said.
During his testimony, Witt acknowledged, for instance, that the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee had refused to allow FBI agents to interview congressional staffers who had been present for Floris and Benavides’ testimony — a crucial step needed to establish materiality in the case.
The only person he was ultimately allowed to speak with was Steve Castor, the general counsel for the House Judiciary Republicans, who acknowledged he had not witnessed Benavides’ testimony or reviewed the transcript. Witt did not speak with anyone on behalf of the committee’s Democrats.
Career prosecutors later realized the potentially fatal mistake and tried to raise it before the case was charged. In a taped conversation released to defense lawyers by the government, Carlton Davis, a political appointee who is special counsel to U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, could be heard admitting the mistake.
“I have one issue that I’m getting hammered on over here,” Faruqui quoted Davis as saying. “I realize this is our f***-up.”
Faruqui also noted there were numerous errors in the original charging document compared with the superseding version he later dismissed — and even Witt himself made misstatements on the stand — misstatements he noted were not criminal because he did not think Witt intended to lie.
He openly pondered why the government had failed to pressure test the case before proceeding to charge it, and likened the three-day hearing to the equivalent of an indictment review.
Instead of working out the problems and the mistakes privately within the Justice Department, he said, those issues got worked out “in open court for the whole world to watch.”
He also lamented the collateral consequences that the case could have, noting it was practically “marketing material” for deterring people from joining the FBI’s ranks, and would have a “chilling effect” on Congress’ ability to take people’s testimony. In the future, he said, Congress can expect that more people will plead the Fifth Amendment, and be deterred from appearing voluntarily as Floris and Benavides both did.
Above all, he predicted the case would erode confidence in the Justice Department and said he also felt sorry not just for the defendants, but also for the career prosecutors and agents who were forced to participate.
“This case is dismissed,” he said. “I am sorry you have been dragged through this process.”

Politics

Voters rebuff data centers in every ballot measure except one

The artificial intelligence data center boom hit a roadblock on election night, further complicating the tech industry’s historic expansion plans.
There were 41 local ballot measures in 10 states up for a vote on Tuesday that would place restrictions on the construction of data centers in different ways, according to Ballotpedia.
Voters sided against data centers in each measure except one in Harwood, North Dakota, according to an analysis by Ballotpedia and additional results gathered by CNBC on Wednesday.
The City of Harwood voted against a charter rule amendment that would have required additional review before city approval of industrial developments, including data centers.
In Ohio, where Democrat Sherrod Brown ousted Republican Sen. Jon Husted after casting the incumbent as “the face of data centers,” 21 local measures were up for a vote, according to Ballotpedia.
The Buckeye State, which was named America’s Top State for Business in 2026 by CNBC, has become a key battleground for the issue.
OpenAI announced in August that it secured 8 gigawatts of computing capacity at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Ohio, the largest planned AI data center campus in the world. The first phase of construction is slated to begin this year, and capacity is expected to come online in phases starting in 2028, according to the project’s website.
SoftBank and SB Energy are developing the Ohio data center campus in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy. SoftBank is a major investor in OpenAI, and the two companies announced plans to invest $1 billion in SB Energy earlier this year.
Nvidia is also backstopping the project, which could cost more than $500 billion in total.
The Ohio governor’s mansion also turned blue, as Democrat Amy Acton, a physician, defeated Republican businessman Vivek Ramaswamy. Acton supports a “conditional moratorium” on data centers to ensure they cover 100% of utility costs and “exclusively build with union labor.”
Heading into the election, the AI trade was already faltering on Wall Street, with chipmakers, neoclouds and other data center-related companies selling off in October on concerns about rising interest rates and overspending. The hyperscalers — Alphabet , Amazon , Microsoft and Meta — are each spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on AI infrastructure to meet what they say is insatiable demand. All of those companies except Microsoft have turned cash flow negative in the process.
Getting data center projects off the ground may have just gotten a lot harder.
Communities in California, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, New Jersey, Nevada and Wisconsin also went to the polls to weigh in on the issue, according to Ballotpedia, and data centers were a key motivating factor for voters in matters up and down the ballot.
In a CNBC Voter Poll, 56% of voters said data centers were a crucial or major factor in their decision, with Democrats ranking the issue higher than Republicans.
Democrats who campaigned on pausing or regulating new projects won key races in Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia and Texas, which is on track to become the world’s largest data center market by 2030.
In one of the biggest results of the night for Democrats, Gina Hinojosa unseated Gov. Greg Abbott after blaming the Republican incumbent for the rapid buildout of data centers across Texas, saying he put the tech industry’s interests ahead of local communities.
Silicon Valley spent record sums trying to shape the 2026 midterms, with the GOP boasting a commanding advantage among the election’s biggest donors. According to a CNBC analysis of Federal Election Commission records, 14 of the 20 largest donor groups backed Republicans almost exclusively. Crypto, AI and online gambling interests poured in more than $377 million.
Elon Musk, who spent hundreds of millions of dollars this election cycle, largely came up empty.
“Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now,” Musk wrote in a post on X.
The Texas results appear to be a warning sign for the AI industry as a whole.
Within hours of the polls closing, Democrats were already calling for AI executives to testify under oath.
Among the first to seize on the results was Rep. Greg Casar, the Texas Democrat who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
“The House Democratic majority must make it a top priority to protect Americans’ jobs, freedom, and lives from AI billionaires,” Casar said in a statement after Democrats were projected to win the House. “AI company CEOs should be called to testify under oath.”
Casar also accused Republicans of being “bought and paid for by AI billionaires,” arguing that voters had rejected that influence and warning Democrats to “hold them accountable instead of cashing their checks.”
He said the data center fight is only the beginning.
“The revolt against data centers was one of the top issues of the 2026 election,” he said. “And in a few years we will look back on it as just the early tremor of a much bigger AI earthquake upending American politics.”
— CNBC’s Ashley Capoot contributed to this article.
WATCH: Data center backlash raises questions over U.S. AI capex growth

Politics

Mike Johnson will step aside as top House Republican : NPR

Midterms coverage: Live results | Takeaways | Stories around the country
Stay connected: NPR Politics Podcast | NPR Politics newsletter | NPR app
After a bruising defeat for Republicans, House Speaker Mike Johnson does not plan to stay on as Republican leader in the new Congress, according to a source familiar with his plans who was not authorized to discuss them publicly.
The Louisiana Republican served two terms as speaker, elected after his predecessor, California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, was ousted in 2023.
Johnson’s decision will open a role for the top House leadership position in the minority. Republicans are scheduled to hold their leadership elections on Nov. 10.
Historically, the president’s party loses seats in midterm elections. The blue wave soared past the expectations of many in Washington, flipping seats in traditionally red states that the president has won previously.
Johnson nodded to that history in remarks Tuesday night.
“From the first day of this election, we knew that to keep the House and sustain our majority, we would have to defy more than a century of midterm history. It’s only happened twice in 90 years that a sitting president has picked up or held seats for his party in that first two-year cycle. There’s a lot of reasons for it. It’s very, very difficult to overcome, and it looks like history will be kept tonight,” he said.
Johnson worked closely with the Trump administration throughout his tenure as speaker, and endured the balancing act of trying to keep his conference united with the narrowest of majorities. His razor thin majority meant even one Republican defection meant GOP priorities were at risk.
That dynamic will not be replicated for the presumptive next House Speaker, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York. While there are a handful of lawmakers elected with support of the Democratic Socialists of America, eager to push the party further to the left, the comfortable margin for Jeffries means he will likely be able to achieve his priorities, even with defections.
His speakership would be history making — he would be the first Black lawmaker elected to the position.

Politics

James Talarico was a 23-year-old middle school teacher when a student inspired him to run for office

The 37-year-old is now the state’s first elected Democratic Senator in nearly four decades—and his unlikely path to Washington began as a public school teacher.
Talarico started his working career teaching sixth grade at Rhodes Middle School, a high-poverty area in San Antonio, when he recognized how state policies were hurting his students.
The then-23-year-old educator witnessed the impacts of massive budget cuts that wiped out critical resources from kids living in an already underserved area; in 2011 the Texas Legislature cut $5.4 billion in public school funding following a budget shortfall. The loss of support for the state’s poorest students—and the strife of underpaid and overworked teachers—inspired his pursuit of public office just a few short years later.
“I served my students on the West Side and served their families and really saw the impacts of economic injustice up close and personal,” Talarico told Austin PBS last year. “That experience is what motivated me to then run for office, because I saw students slipping through the cracks, I saw teachers driving Ubers at night to make extra money, I saw teachers selling their own blood plasma to make ends meet. And I knew that was wrong.”
The average middle school teacher in Texas makes $63,400 annually, according to USAFacts, and is ranked in the bottom half of U.S. states when it comes to pay.
Fortune reached out to James Talarico for Texas for comment.
Meet the struggling student who inspired Talarico’s political career
Talarico only taught in Texas’ public school system for two years before taking his ambitions to non-profits and politics. Yet one student’s story in his teaching career left a lasting mark—and has been a recurring anecdote during his senatorial campaign trail.
The eighth-generation Texan often recounts the story of one struggling sixth-grader named Justin who emboldened him to run for office. The kid had a tough upbringing, was abandoned by his mother, and had just been kicked out of a previous school for bringing a knife and threatening violence against a teacher.
Talarico made an effort to build a connection, and the 11-year-old was making progress, even gifting him a snowflake cup from the Dollar Tree. But then Justin got into another altercation at school—his “third strike.” Talarico remembers him being carried out of school without his feet ever touching the ground; that was the last time he ever saw Justin.
After doing some digging, he found that the school district therapist appointed to Justin had been eliminated amid Texas’ budget cuts. Students who have been exposed to tough upbringings, violence, and trauma suddenly lost their lifelines of support. Talarico described it as a “radicalizing” experience, and set out to pursue a career in public service.
“I promised myself right then that if I ever got a little bit of power or a little bit of influence, that I would do everything I could with every fiber of my being to stop that from happening again,” Talarico said in a 2025 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
Talarico’s rise from middle-school teacher to Texas Senator
After his teaching stint, Talarico went on to become the Central Texas executive director of Reasoning Mind: an education nonprofit focused on math instruction and classroom technology.
In 2017, he launched his first-ever political campaign in running for the Texas House. And the following year, at just 29, Talarico won the special election and the regular election for the district, flipping the seat from Republican to Democrat.
There, he implemented school funding reform and introduced his Whole Student Agenda addressing pupil mental health and various school-related issues.
Talarico has since held onto a seat amid switching to District 50 in 2022, and just last year, announced his Senate bid to challenge the Republican nominee in Texas.
Now, he’s the Lone Star State’s first Democratic Senator elected since 1988, and has the potential to earn a U.S. Senator’s average salary of $174,000. Despite becoming a high-profile political force, he still leads with the lessons from his middle-school teaching days.
“Justin and my students are the ones I think about when I’m at the Capitol,” Talarico continued during the podcast. “They are the criteria that I use to evaluate public policy, not if it’s a Democratic bill or Republican bill, not if it’s going to get me ex-lobbyist support.”

Politics

‘Chucky’ Creator Calls Out Nicki Minaj’s AI ‘Vote Red’ Post

Don Mancini, the creator of the horror movie franchise Chucky, has a few things to clear up about Nicki Minaj’s Election Day post. After the rapper shared an AI-generated image of his killer doll encouraging people to vote Republican, Mancini responded Wednesday with a series of posts explaining why Chucky would have voted Democrat.
“HAPPY ELECTION DAY!!!” Minaj wrote Tuesday, alongside an AI-generated image of Chucky in a pink suit, sporting a “Vote Red” badge. Mancini replied directly to the post.
“IMPOSTER. CHUCKY IS PART OF THE BLUE WAVE THAT WILL WASH AWAY ALL THE CORRUPTION,” he wrote.
In a separate post, Mancini spelled out a few of the character’s objections to being drafted into MAGA.
“Chucky has a trans kid. Chucky protects the dolls. Chucky is anti-ICE. Chucky says ‘A BLUE WAVE is coming, as BLUE as my fuckin’ eyes!’”
Mancini followed up with a photo of a Chucky doll with blue hair. “Too bad, Nicki! No AI, by the way!” he wrote, adding the hashtag #bluewave.
Minaj has turned to Chucky before when posting about politics. In January, she shared an image of the doll while attacking Don Lemon over his coverage of an anti-ICE protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota. She used a homophobic slur against the journalist and demanded his arrest. Later, she posted another image of Chucky, this time raising a middle finger.
“I’m glad they’re angry. They’re about to get angrier,” she wrote at the time.
Meanwhile, Chucky’s family history has been part of the franchise’s lore for decades. His child Glen/Glenda was central to 2004’s Seed of Chucky. In the second episode of the Chucky TV series, the murderous doll tells its teenage protagonist, Jake, “You know, I have a queer kid.” He then specifies that his child is genderfluid.
Trending Stories
“And you’re cool with it?” Jake asks.
“I’m not a monster, Jake,” Chucky replies.

Politics

‘Seismic shift’: World reacts to US midterm election results

Democrats in the United States have scored a major victory in midterm elections, taking control of both chambers of Congress in a stinging rebuke of President Donald Trump and his Republican Party.
The results are being carefully watched outside the US, as foreign leaders consider how the new political reality in Washington could affect US foreign policy – from the conflict with Iran to the Russia-Ukraine war and trade relations.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 items
list 1 of 3Republicans fuming after Democrat Talarico flips Texas Senate blue
list 2 of 3Key takeaways from the 2026 midterm elections in California
list 3 of 3Democrat Troy Jackson unseats Republican Senator Susan Collins in Maine
end of list
Trump himself has acknowledged the US-Israel war on Iran likely impacted his party’s poor performance in the elections, saying voters were probably not ready “for the short-term consequence of the price of gasoline”.
Here are the latest reactions from world leaders, as the scale of the Democratic victory continues to emerge:
European Union
European Parliament Vice President Christel Schaldemose said the US results left her “cautiously optimistic on Europe’s behalf”.
“Not because everything now ⁠⁠changes for the better, but because it could benefit the support for Ukraine, the green transition, and ⁠⁠relations with the rest of the world,” said Schaldemose in a post on X.
“But the EU must continue the course of standing stronger and standing on its own two feet. That’s not up for debate,” she added.
Iran
Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who is also the chief negotiator in talks with the US, said voters had rejected conflict.
“Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message,” wrote Ghalibaf in a post on X.
“If the US govt betrays their public will to serve international paymasters and blackmailers, it will learn our NO comes with a Nightmare,” he added.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, meanwhile, said partisan shifts in Washington would not alter the US’s “hostility” towards Tehran.
“If there are still those who harbour even the slightest hope that the behaviour of the hegemonic system could change through party or factional shifts, or who believe that making concessions to the US could persuade it to abandon its hostility towards the Iranian people, they are gravely mistaken,” said Khamenei in a statement shared by Iranian state media.
Israel
There was no immediate reaction from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a Trump ally whose coalition lost its own majority in Israel’s parliament in elections last week.
However, opposition figure Yair Golan, whose party is in a coalition seeking to replace Netanyahu, said the US vote reveals “just how toxic Netanyahu has become” among US Democrats and Republicans alike.
He warned that if Netanyahu and his far-right government remain in power, Israel would be on “a path toward international sanctions, global isolation, and a confrontation with the United States – our most important friend and ally.”
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid, also part of the anti-Netanyahu coalition, said the US vote effectively ruled out “any possibility of a unity government led by Netanyahu”.
United Kingdom
Health Minister James Frith stressed that the UK would maintain steady, strong ties with Washington despite an apparent “seismic shift in domestic politics for the Americans”.
“The change of emphasis of power in the States is frequent,” Frith told British media. “But the mainstay of the relationship with the UK Government, as its closest ally, is unwavering and unchanging.”
“So I don’t expect it to change the nature of the relationship at all; it remains very strong,” he added.
France
Finance Minister Roland Lescure said France would wait to see whether Trump, who remains in control of US foreign policy, adjusts his approach.
“Either he decides to rise above the fray – acknowledging that ‌‌changes are necessary, particularly regarding gasoline prices, which directly ‌‌affect people – and, I might add, he tones down his international involvement, or he does not,” Lescure told French TV. “Frankly, this is something we will need to keep an eye on in the ⁠⁠coming days.”
Spain
Left-wing Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the US Democrats’ landslide victory was emblematic of the “unravelling” of the global far right.
“It happened in Brazil. It just happened in the US. And it will soon happen in Spain,” said Sanchez, whose own premiership is at stake in snap elections he called for November 29 .
Sanchez said US voters had rejected policies that “only ‌‌impoverish”, as well as hate, sexism, climate change denialism and “the privileges of the elites”.
Greece
Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said US-Greek relations would not be affected by the election results.
“Greek-American relations will remain strong,” he told local media. “The United States is our strategic ally, and this will continue for major projects ⁠⁠and all major agreements. Nothing will be affected by this outcome. It is obvious that we respect every outcome. The conclusions are clear.”
Russia
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov stressed the need to wait for the final results of US elections to come into focus, but noted that leaders in the US Democratic Party had a “sharply negative” approach to relations with Moscow.
Russia’s position on Ukraine and broader foreign policy “is not based on short-term considerations and, naturally, does not depend on the fluctuations of the political barometer in other countries,” Ryabkov was quoted by Russian state media as saying.
“We will continue our work in accordance with the directives of the President of the Russian Federation,” he added.
Kremlin spokesman ⁠Dmitry Peskov said Moscow hoped the US midterm results would not impact Trump’s “peacemaking efforts”.
China
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Beijing would continue its “constructive strategic relationship” with the US, stressing that US elections are a “domestic affair”.
“China is willing to work with the US to safeguard and implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, strengthen communication, properly manage differences and expand cooperation, build a constructive strategic relationship based on respect and equality,” Mao told reporters in Beijing.
Japan
Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said whatever the outcome of the US vote, “the Japan-US alliance the is the cornerstone of Japan’s foreign and security policy.”
“As the international situation becomes turbulent and increasingly uncertain, a strong Japan-US alliance is essential for maximising Japan’s national interests and for peace and stability in the international community,” Kihara said at a press briefing.
South Africa
⁠President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has clashed with Trump over the US president’s promotion of debunked claims of a white genocide in South Africa, said the election marks “a new era in world relations”.
“We have seen that the ⁠⁠Democrats have taken ⁠⁠control of the Senate and of ⁠⁠the House, and ⁠⁠the ⁠⁠people of America have spoken,” Ramaphosa told ‌‌reporters.