Garland to announce 'significant national security cases' Monday
One of the cases concerns an attempt to pressure a New York-based critic of the Communist Chinese government to return to the country; the second involves efforts to obtain secret information about the US prosecution of Chinese tech giant Huawei; and a third deals with the recruitment of spies in the US.
The first case charges seven Chinese citizens – Tian Peng, 38, Chenghua Chen, Chunde Ming, Xuexin Hou, 52, and Weidong Yuan, 55, Quanzhong An, 55 and Guangyang An, 34, – with participating in an effort to “harass and coerce” a US resident to return to China “as part of an international extralegal repatriation effort known as ‘Operation Fox Hunt,’” according to the department.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announces the charges at a press conference on Monday, Oct. 24, 2022.“The defendants threatened the victim saying that, ‘Coming back and turning yourself in is the only way out,’” Garland said. “They showed up at the home of the victim’s son in New York. They filed frivolous lawsuits against the victim and his son and said it would be ‘endless misery for the defendant and son to defend themselves.
In the Huawei case, two Chinese intelligence agents named as Dong He and Zheng Wang tried to bribe a US law enforcement official with $41,000 in bitcoin for information pertaining to the matter, Garland said. If convicted, Dong and Wang face up to 40 and 20 years in prison, respectively, according to court documents.