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The Justice Department dropped a half-dozen cases against Chinese military researchers it had accused of lying on their visas to work in the United States in a dramatic reversal that came amid questions about the FBI s analysis of the evidence.
The cases, being heard in the Eastern District of California, were among a batch touted last summer by the DOJ and targeting members of the Chinese military.
“In all of our prosecutions, the Department of Justice evaluates the merits of a case as it prepares for trial, DOJ spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle told the
Washington Examiner. Recent developments in a handful of cases involving defendants with alleged, undisclosed ties to the People’s Liberation Army of the People’s Republic of China have prompted the department to reevaluate these prosecutions, and we have determined that it is now in the interest of justice to dismiss them.
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Late Thursday afternoon, Malcolm Segal and Tom Johnson were in their respective law offices on Capitol Mall in downtown Sacramento preparing for a Friday hearing in federal court for Juan Tang, a Chinese cancer researcher who was due to face trial starting Monday.
Suddenly, they saw a filing from federal prosecutors come online, one that was asking U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez to dismiss the case the government had been pursuing for a year.
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The Justice Department moved in recent days to drop charges against four researchers at California universities accused of hiding their ties to the Chinese military, a blow to U.S. efforts to battle Beijing’s attempts to steal U.S. national security and business secrets.
Juan Tang
(Department of Justice)
On Thursday, federal prosecutors in Sacramento asked a judge to dismiss the case of Juan Tang, a cancer researcher at UC Davis who had been accused of lying on a visa application about having served in the Chinese military. The request was granted, and on Friday prosecutors in three similar cases sought to dismiss charges against researchers who worked at Stanford University, UC San Francisco and UCLA.
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DOJ Drops Charges Against 5 Researchers Accused of Hiding Chinese Military Affiliations: Report
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has dropped its charges against five visiting Chinese scientists who were accused of lying about the extent of their ties to the Chinese military.
The scientists included biomedical and cancer researchers in California and a doctoral candidate studying artificial intelligence in Indiana, whose various charges, including visa fraud, were dropped by prosecutors, according to brief court filings late Thursday and Friday, reported the Wall Street Journal.
One of the scientists, Tang Juan, a biology researcher based at the University of California–Davis, was scheduled to appear before a jury for the start of her trial on Monday. She headed toward a flight back to China after her Chinese passport was returned, reported The Sacramento Bee.