US charges American government official in Beijing scheme to harass Chinese dissidents

Indictment alleges the official and a retired agent passed information from restricted federal database to other defendants seeking to surveil activists in US
The two arrested men affiliated with the Homeland Security Department are accused of lying to FBI agents about their involvement in the Beijing-backed scheme

US-China relations

Owen Churchill

Published: 1:00am, 8 Jul 2022

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The United States government has brought criminal charges against a US homeland security official and a retired law enforcement agent over their alleged involvement in a plot to harass US-based Chinese dissidents on behalf of the Chinese government.

An indictment returned by a grand jury on Wednesday alleged that the two men had passed along information on Chinese dissidents from a restricted federal database to other defendants seeking to surveil US-based pro-democracy activists.

The two men – Craig Miller, a 15-year employee of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Derrick Taylor, a retired DHS official – were both accused of lying to FBI agents about their involvement in the scheme and charged with obstructing justice. Miller was also accused of destroying evidence.

If convicted, Miller and Taylor face up to 20 and 25 years’ imprisonment, respectively.

The charges represent the latest in a string of actions by the administration of US President Joe Biden to counter what US officials call a campaign of “transnational repression” by Beijing, accusations the Chinese government has roundly denied.

As well as a series of prosecutions launched by the US Justice Department, the administration in recent months has sanctioned unnamed Chinese officials deemed responsible for efforts to surveil and intimidate ethnic minority groups and activists living overseas.

“We will defend the rights of people in the United States to engage in free speech and political expression, including views the [Chinese] government wants to silence,” Matt Olsen, the US assistant attorney general for national security, said on Thursday in remarks announcing the latest charges.

The fresh charges, filed in a federal court in New York, build upon a prior case involving three other defendants who were charged in March over a plot to surveil Chinese dissidents and destroy a statue by a US-based artist that disparaged Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Fan Liu, the New York-based owner of what prosecutors called a “purported media company”, and Matthew Ziburis, a former correctional officer, were arrested in March and charged with conspiring to act as agents of the Chinese government.

US prosecutors alleged they acted at the direction of a China-based defendant, Sun Qiang, who was charged with conspiring to commit interstate harassment. He remains at large.

Miller and Taylor, who were arrested in June, will be arraigned at a later date along with the other defendants in the case, prosecutors said.

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Prosecutors described Taylor as a former DHS official currently working as a private investigator in California. He was alleged to have approached Miller, an official based in the agency’s Minneapolis office, on behalf of a “co-conspirator” of Liu’s, seeking help in obtaining information on several Chinese dissidents in the US.

The information included passport details, flight records, and immigration history, according to prosecutors, who said the data was then used by Liu, Ziburis, and Sun to “target and harass” the Chinese dissidents.

Miller told FBI agents Taylor had given him a “gift card” in exchange for the information.

Top US rights official decries ‘transnational repression’ campaign by China

He also admitted to having lied to FBI agents about his contact with Taylor and to deleting a text exchange with him, prosecutors said. Taylor was alleged to have falsely claimed that he obtained the data from a friend using the dark web.

Breon Peace, the US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said his office would “always work closely with our law enforcement partners to root out corrupt officials in all levels of government and will prosecute those who act on behalf of a hostile foreign state to target the free speech of US residents on American soil”.

Reflecting the Biden administration’s strategy to counter China with a united front of allies, FBI director Christopher Wray said in London on Wednesday the US would work closely with Britain in countering the threat of “transnational repression”, which he described as “an evil in its own right and an assault on the freedoms of an open society”.

In response, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Thursday that Wray’s remarks had “fully exposed his entrenched Cold War zero-sum mentality and ideological prejudice”.

The Biden administration has ramped up its response to alleged attempts by Beijing to target individuals in the US while it has simultaneously wound down the Justice Department’s China Initiative, a contentious programme set up by the previous administration of Donald Trump to target economic espionage by Beijing.

Plagued by accusations by civil society groups of racial profiling, the initiative was scrapped in February, as Justice Department officials signalled a “broader approach” to combating threats from China, Russia, North Korea, and others.