Baimadajie Angwang was charged with spying for China, wire fraud, lying to and obstructing investigators. But the charges were dropped this week, reports CNN, after they "obtained additional information."
The 2020 arrest was one of a number of federal cases brought against Chinese Americans connected to the Trump Administration's "China Initiative," a Department of Justice program focused on "countering Chinese national security threats." The program was scrapped in February 2022 under the Biden Administration after a string of case dismissals and criticisms it fueled suspicion and bias against innocent Chinese Americans.
Sounds rather like the prosecutors went too far editing the evidence for the court's appreciation:
In court documents, defense attorneys argued the government had a "hyper-suspicious" view of Angwang's interactions with the Chinese consulate official and had cherry-picked quotes and cut out others from their conversations. Angwang's only goal in cultivating a relationship with the official was because the official had power to grant or deny visa applications for New York-based ethnic Tibetans, like himself, trying to return to China, the attorneys wrote.
