US to retry former Tennessee professor on charges of lying about ties to China

(CN) — Despite widespread criticism of government overreach and racial profiling amid a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, federal prosecutors said Friday they plan to retry a former University of Tennessee at Knoxville professor accused of intentionally hiding his part-time connection to a Chinese university in a scheme to defraud NASA.

The case ended in a mistrial in June after the government failed to convince all 12 jurors that former professor Anming Hu was guilty of wire fraud and making false statements, charges the FBI pursued after being unable to prove he engaged in economic espionage. Hu’s career was derailed as a result of the accusations.

The aerospace and engineering professor was specifically accused of concealing an affiliation with the Beijing University of Technology in grant applications with NASA.

One of the jurors who held out told The Intercept shortly after the trial that it was “the most ridiculous case,” later adding she was “scared for this man” because the government “spent all this time and money on this big giant nothing burger, and they were not going to leave without a pound of flesh.”

It was the first case to go to trial under the Department of Justice’s Trump-era policy known as the China Initiative.

Hu’s attorney Philip Lomonaco did not return a request for comment following the government’s decision to move forward again with the case.

“For over a year, Professor Hu has been detained in his home and separated from his family,” John C. Yang, president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, said in a statement following the news. “He has lost years of his life, his job, his immigration status, his ability to obtain future federal grants and possibly his career.”

The economic and national security threat is real, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned in July 2020.

“If you are an American adult, it is more likely than not that China has stolen your personal data,” he said, pointing to the February 2020 indictment charging four members of the Chinese military with stealing the personal data of 150 million Americans in 2017 when they conspired to hack credit reporting agency Equifax.

He stressed, however, the security concerns have nothing to do with “the Chinese people, and it’s certainly not about Chinese Americans.”

“When I speak of the threat from China, I mean the government of China and the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.

But Hu’s and other similar cases have drawn criticism from lawmakers and civil rights groups over government overreach by the China Initiative, a program created in 2018 out of the concerns Wray referenced.

Since its creation, federal prosecutors and investigators across the country have been pushed to focus on bringing cases under the initiative, a pressure Hu’s defense pointed to as reason for investigators to continue pursuing charges despite no evidence being found.

Just days after Hu’s case was declared a mistrial, three members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to DOJ Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz to investigate the reports of alleged misconduct by the FBI in their unsuccessful prosecution of Hu.

Asian Americans Advancing Justice also sent a letter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee asking that prosecutors drop the charges against Hu.

“Although we recognize that the Chinese Government is engaging in economic espionage and intellectual property theft, we believe that the U.S. Government at times has overreached under the ‘China Initiative,’ and is surveilling, targeting, and over-criminalizing Asian American scientists,” the civil rights group's letter states.

While racial targeting is nothing new to Asian-Americans, the push for government accountability has become more dire amid the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, Vivin Qiang of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, said in a recent interview.

“The two issues — anti-Asian hate, as well as the racial profiling of scientists and researchers — I think they come from similar racial biases,” she said. “Whether that be just because you're of Asian descent, you may be a carrier of the coronavirus; or just because you are of Asian descent, you might be a spy for the Chinese government.”

Since 2009, the percentage of people charged with economic espionage who are of Asian descent grew from 26% to 62%, according to a study published in the Cardozo Law Review. Of those, 22% were never convicted of espionage.

“In other words, as many as one in five Asian-Americans accused of being spies may be innocent,” the study found, a rate twice as large as for other races.

“We have an intelligence community — the FBI — who are incredibly sophisticated,” said Michelle Boykins, communications director for Asian Americans Advancing Justice. “They have the most sophisticated technology to be able to actually say, ‘Yes, this person is a national security threat,’ versus what we're actually finding is that the majority of them pose no security threat whatsoever.”

“Basically we're saying to them, ‘do your job and do it better,’” she added.

With a new trial for Hu on the horizon, the advocacy group says it will continue to support efforts that they hope will lead to Hu’s acquittal.

“What the federal government has done today is confirm an utter disregard for justice and our democracy,” Yang, the group's president said in his statement. “What happened to Professor Hu and his family is not an isolated event and is part of systemic racial bias, discrimination, and profiling by our federal government against scientists and researchers of Asian descent across the country.”

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