Hunter Biden signs with CAA as ex-FBI officials are charged over probes of him

By Helena Thorncroft

WASHINGTON — Hunter Biden, a Georgetown graduate who now calls himself an artist above all, is back in Washington’s headlines this weekend after the Justice Department charged two former FBI officials in a case tied to the investigations of him, even as he takes new steps to build a public career as an artist.

On Friday, the Justice Department charged two former senior FBI officials, Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, with lying to Congress about their roles in investigations of Biden, CNBC reported. The two surrendered on arrest warrants Friday morning, according to U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro. The same day, Variety reported that Creative Artists Agency had signed Biden, a deal that could see the agency seek “new ways for the former attorney and current painter to promote himself or tell stories in a variety of ventures.”

The charges

Prosecutors say the two former officials lied in 2023 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee about the FBI’s work on the Biden investigations, which began in 2019, according to CNBC, citing an FBI agent’s affidavit. The Associated Press reported that the charges concern their involvement in investigating Biden’s laptop in the run-up to the 2020 election.

“Floris and Benavides allegedly lied to Congress about their roles in the FBI’s Hunter Biden investigations, with one claiming they only learned about it from Wikipedia — despite evidence showing their involvement in helping shape the public narrative about Hunter Biden’s laptop right before the election,” Pirro said on X, CNBC reported. FBI Director Kash Patel said the charges “stem from an ongoing investigation into the since-dissolved FBI Foreign Influence Task Force,” on which both officials served, and that “documentary evidence, contemporaneous communications, and witness accounts contradict their testimony.”

Floris’ attorneys called the charges “nonsense.” “It’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election,” they said in a statement, according to CNBC, which noted that the filing came less than two weeks before the midterms, breaking with longstanding Justice Department guidance discouraging actions that could affect upcoming races. The defendants are presumed innocent. Floris’ legal team includes Christopher Mattei, a former federal prosecutor who, according to his firm biography, earned his bachelor’s degree magna cum laude at Georgetown.

Biden himself is not accused of anything in the new case. His father, then-President Joe Biden, granted him a full and unconditional pardon on Dec. 1, 2024, covering federal offenses from Jan. 1, 2014, through that date.

‘The process is the purpose’

Biden has spent the fall telling his own story. In Los Angeles Magazine’s October issue, which identifies him as a Georgetown and Yale Law School graduate, he sat with actor Martin Sheen at his Los Angeles studio. “At Georgetown, I took a number of classes. I had a great art teacher but no real formal training,” he said, adding that he is “all self-taught.” He also told Sheen that he had taught for four years as an adjunct professor in a master’s program at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service.

Biden said he has been sober since June 2019 and has painted “hundreds of paintings” in the seven years since. He said he is working with Peak Path Health in Los Angeles, is trying to start a foundation to offer free aftercare to people leaving treatment, and works with Basta Universal, a Southern California eviction-defense and homelessness-prevention group. Asked about restoring his law license, he said, “Maybe one day.”

In a companion first-person essay, he wrote that he “painted through the investigations, the trials, all of it,” and that “the market, the critics or the committees asking who bought what never mattered,” LAmag published. “The process is the purpose,” he concluded.

Variety reported that Biden launched a Substack column this year, “Where’s Hunter,” and a meme coin called $LAPTOP. CAA, which has represented his father, provided a biographical sketch describing his abstract, mixed-media work as exploring “memory, transformation, and the natural world.”

The Inquisitor is seeking comment from the Justice Department, the FBI, the White House, attorneys for Floris and Benavides, CAA and Biden’s representatives. This story will be updated with any response.

Photo: Hunter Biden at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2013 (cropped). CSIS, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.