Questioning of the prosecution’s final two witnesses on Friday focused on supporting the charge that Tao was actively working with the Chinese university.
The government claims that Tao accepted a full-time position with Fuzhou University and did not disclose it to KU, while also receiving grants from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Prosecutors have focused on allegations that Tao deceived KU by hiding his acceptance of a position at a Chinese university and attempted to recruit students to work with him in a lab there. Since Tao is charged with wire fraud, not espionage, mention of the China Initiative has been limited by the judge. He mentioned a former graduate student of Tao’s who allegedly took revenge for a perceived slight by submitting a false report under assumed identities claiming that Tao was a tech spy. Critics have said the China Initiative unfairly targeted Asian and Asian American scientists.ĭefense lawyer Peter Zeidenberg said during his opening statement that the defense team would focus on what they said was a rush to prosecution without a deeper look at the evidence. The Biden administration terminated the program, which has ended with several cases being dropped. At the time, federal agents were operating under a Trump administration program called the “China Initiative” aimed at stopping alleged intellectual property theft. Tao was arrested in 2019 after extensive law enforcement surveillance of his interactions with a Chinese research program and university.
0 kommentar(er)
