Attorney General Merrick Garland defended the Justice Department‘s decision to shut down the Trump-era China Initiative during a press conference announcing a host of criminal charges against Chinese intelligence officers and government agents.
The DOJ announced Monday that it had charged 13 people, including members of the security and intelligence apparatus of the People’s Republic of China, for “efforts to unlawfully exert influence in the United States for the benefit of the government of the PRC.”
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var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_66024215", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1119467"} }); ","_id":"00000184-0bc3-d791-abd4-1fdff0df0000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedThe China Initiative was launched in 2018 but was shut down by the DOJ in February, sandwiched between the department unveiling a domestic terrorism unit in January and launching a special task force to target Russian oligarchs in March. Garland and Matt Olsen, the DOJ’s assistant attorney general for national security, defended the decision to shut down the China Initiative during a Monday press conference.
“So, as I think these cases make quite clear, we are unrelenting in our efforts to prevent the government of China from economic espionage, from operating in the United States as foreign agents, from trying to affect our rule of law and our judicial system, from trying to target and recruit Americans to help them,” Garland said when asked if ending the China Initiative was a mistake. “I’m gonna let Mr. Olsen say more about the China Initiative, but I think this case should be very clear that we have not in any way changed our focus on those kind of behaviors by China.”
DOJ CHARGES CHINESE SPIES FOR HELPING HUAWEI
One of the three cases announced by the DOJ on Monday involved charges against two alleged Chinese spies for criminal obstruction of justice for their efforts to interfere with a DOJ investigation into the Chinese military-backed global telecommunications firm Huawei.
“We have stayed very focused on the threat that the PRC poses to our values, to our institutions. We speak through our cases, and we speak to those cases today,” Olsen said in defense of tossing the China Initiative during the Monday press conference. “And I think what we are charging today in terms of the range and persistence of the threat we see from the PRC demonstrates that we have remained relentless and focused on that threat, and we will continue to be focused on that threat going forward.”
Olsen added: “We ended the China Initiative earlier this year after a lengthy review and adopted a broader strategy focused on the range of threats that we face from a variety of nation-states, and that’s the strategy that we’re carrying forward.”
The move to shutter the initiative followed a year of criticism from some fellow Democrats, hundreds of university professors, left-wing activists, and the Chinese government itself.
Olsen said in February that he decided to end the China Initiative and argued the effort could have been perceived as racist, even as he acknowledged that China poses an “evolving, significant threat.”
But, Olsen added: “In the course of my review, I never saw any indication, none, that any decision that the Justice Department made was based on bias or prejudice of any kind. This was a concern that I understand, and I appreciate that perception, but I didn’t see that in any of the cases or any of the decisions that were made.”
Republicans have criticized the Biden administration for ending the China-focused initiative and are pushing for a new law that would revive it while seeking to rebrand it as a “CCP Initiative” aimed squarely at the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party.
Despite big setbacks in some cases, numerous people have been convicted through the China Initiative, including Harvard professor Charles Lieber, who was found guilty last December of all federal charges related to concealing his ties to a Chinese university and the Chinese government’s Thousand Talents Program while receiving U.S. government funding.
The Monday charges also included an indictment against seven Chinese nationals, two of whom were arrested last week, for “participating in a scheme to cause the forced repatriation of a PRC national residing in the United States.”
The effort was part of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security’s international extralegal repatriation effort known as “Operation Fox Hunt.”
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The new charges also included an unsealed indictment charging four Chinese nationals, including three Ministry of State Security intelligence officers, in connection with “a long-running intelligence campaign targeting individuals in the United States to act as agents of the PRC.”
The Chinese intelligence officers “used a purported academic institute at Ocean University of China — referred to as the Institute for International Studies — as cover for their clandestine intelligence activities” and “targeted professors at American universities and others in the United States with access to sensitive information and equipment.”
