U.S. Court Voids Conviction of Kansas Professor in Chinese Research Controversy

U.S. Court Voids Conviction of Kansas Professor
U.S. Court Voids Conviction of Kansas Professor. Credit \ REUTERS

United States: A U.S. appeals court on Thursday dismissed the conviction of a former University of Kansas professor’s false statement to a government agency regarding work he was doing in China, a new blow to the Department of Justice in the Crackdown on Chinese influence in American academia initiated during Trump administration, as reported by Reuters.

Court Decision

The Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, said that the prosecutors failed to present adequate evidence at the trial to sustain the only count of the two that the jurors convicted Feng “Franklin” Tao of in 2022.

In a statement, Peter Zeidenberg, Tao’s attorney, referred to the case as a wrongful prosecution by authorities, who sought even though they did not have sufficient proof that Tao was involved in espionage. He said the case had nearly impoverished Tao’s family, resulting in his dismissal.

“Dr. Tao is grateful that this long nightmare is finally over,” Zeidenberg said.

The Justice Department has refused to comment for this story.

Tao was among about two dozen academicians charged as part of the so-called “China Initiative,” launched in 2018 during Republican Donald Trump’s administration to tackle alleged Chinese economic spying and theft of research.

The Justice Department under Democratic President Joe Biden 2022 closed the China Initiative after some failed prosecutions and complaints of research stifling and Asian discrimination, despite stating it would keep pursuing cases over security threats from China.

Controversy Over Academic Espionage Allegations

According to the prosecutors, Tao, who was involved in renewable energy projects, failed to disclose his connection with Fuzhou University, China, to the University of Kansas and two federal agencies that had funded his research through grants.

Tao was indicted in 2019. A jury in April 2022 found him guilty of four out of the eight charges preferred against him, but a trial judge set aside three of the wire fraud charges, stating that there was no adequate evidence to support the conviction, and then ordered him to be released.

His only conviction was for making a false statement since he did not declare his connection to Fuzhou University when filling out a form at the University of Kansas. Prosecutors stated that this was material for the funding choices of the agencies—the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, as reported by Reuters.

However, U.S. Circuit Judge Nancy Moritz, writing for the majority, ruled that Tao’s statement could not have affected a real decision to fund the project. She pointed out that neither agency had any proposal pending before them from Tao when he made the statement. Moritz, who contributed to the majority’s opinion, stated that it meant that the prosecutors could not demonstrate that the statement was material.