ANALYSIS – After downgrading U.S. counterintelligence efforts against Chinese espionage strengthened by former President Trump, Joe Biden's Department of Justice (DOJ) suddenly pretends to care about Chinese spying.
In a ‘breaking news' press conference yesterday, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Justice Department has charged 13 people for trying to “unlawfully exert influence in the United States” on behalf of the People's Republic of China.
As NBC News reported on the three different cases Garland noted:
One case charges seven Chinese nationals with trying to forcefully repatriate a Chinese national. Four others were charged with targeting people in the U.S. to act on China's behalf. And two other men were charged with interfering in a U.S. criminal prosecution of a global telecommunications company.
NBC News continued:
Garland said: “As these cases demonstrate, the government of China sought to interfere with the rights and freedoms of individuals in the United States and to undermine our judicial system that protects those rights. They did not succeed. The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by any foreign power to undermine the rule of law upon which our democracy is based.”
If only this were true.
Early this year Garland closed down DOJ's China Initiative, created by Trump, which focused on ferreting out Chinese intelligence operatives in American industry and academia.
The successful initiative, launched in 2018, was seen as vital to address the massive counterintelligence threat posed by China.
Matthew Olsen, the head of DOJ's national security division announced an end to the China Initiative in February, even as he acknowledged the program was driven by “genuine national security concerns” over China's aggressive spying. (RELATED: China's Covert Operations Could ‘Overwhelm' Our Security Agencies, Warns Fmr Senior Brit Spy)
In 2021 a DOJ official pointed to an exodus of more than 1,000 researchers, who department officials said had apparently hidden their ties to the Chinese People's Liberation Army and fled the United States after numerous arrests.
The arrests, reported The Washington Post, “were part of an enforcement strategy that extends to what the department calls ‘non-traditional collectors' — or university and lab researchers who officials say are ‘coopted' into stealing American technology for China.”
In his announcement at the time, Olsen cited complaints from civil rights groups that the initiative had “fueled a narrative of intolerance and bias” against Chinese Americans.
In response, GOP lawmakers sent Olsen a letter, reported The Washington Free Beacon, stating: “The Biden administration's decision to end the China Initiative appears to be motivated by nothing more than identity politics.”
The Republican lawmakers added: “The decision to end the China Initiative shows the Biden administration's eagerness to sacrifice national security to appease political activists and the Chinese Communist Party.”
This followed Garland's planned 2021 ‘amnesty program' for Chinese and other spies, which would allow U.S. academics to disclose past foreign funding without fear of prosecution for their disclosures. (RELATED: British 007 ‘Double Agent' RAF Fighter Pilots Trained Chinese Military)
And in 2021 Biden's DOJ also dropped prosecutions of five foreign researchers accused of concealing ties to China's military and who were arrested in 2020 under Trump in a highly publicized sweep against Chinese spying in the United States.
One spy was Tang Juan a researcher at the University of California at Davis, who lied on her visa application, saying she had never served in the Chinese military, when in fact she was a uniformed PLA officer.
Tang's case was particularly noteworthy because she initially sought refuge at the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco before being arrested.
DOJ spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle said in a statement at the time: “Recent developments in a handful of cases involving defendants with alleged, undisclosed ties [to the PLA] have prompted the department to re-evaluate these prosecutions, and we have determined that it is now in the interest of justice to dismiss them.”
While I applaud DOJ's ongoing efforts against Chicom spies in the U.S., I would take them more seriously if they weren't announced two weeks before the midterm elections, and didn't come after two years of Team Biden degrading our efforts countering China's espionage. ALD
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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