‘Abhorrent’ remarks by Donald Trump take centre stage at Meng Wanzhou’s extradition hearing
- The Huawei executive’s lawyers say Trump made ‘intimidating’ threats to intervene in her case, reducing Meng from a human being to ‘chattel’
- They want the case extradition case thrown out as a result, but Canadian government lawyers say the argument is ‘moot’ because Trump is no longer US president
Meng’s lawyer Richard Peck said Trump had “co-opted the extradition process in an attempt to leverage Ms Meng and her extradition status”, when he said soon after her arrest that he “would certainly intervene” in her case to aid his trade war with China.
Peck called the remarks “abhorrent” and an abuse of process, that stained the Canadian justice system and the proceedings against Meng.
“These words cast a pall over these proceedings … They reduce Ms Meng from a human being to a chattel,” Peck said.
He also cast Meng’s arrest in grand terms as part of an attempt to destroy Huawei, a firm that posed “an existential threat to [US] prominence on the world stage”.
Meng’s lawyers had earlier said in a written submission: “Where the Requesting State engages in conduct that offends our Canadian sense of fair play and decency, the Court must intervene to safeguard the integrity of the judicial process. This is such a case.”
They began arguing those claims in the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Vancouver on Wednesday, in a bid to have the US request to have Meng sent for trial in New York thrown out.
If I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made – which is a very important thing – what’s good for national security, I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary
But Trump has loomed large over Meng’s case since she was arrested at Vancouver’s airport on December 1, 2018.
Her lawyers, Huawei and the Chinese government have long argued that she was arrested as a pawn in Trump’s trade war.
However, Canadian government lawyers representing US interests in the extradition case say the argument is “moot” because Trump is no longer president and no intervention took place.
Meng is accused of defrauding HSBC by lying about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran, thus putting the bank at risk of breaching US sanctions on the Middle Eastern country.
Meng’s lawyers say HSBC ‘fully knew’ about Huawei’s Iran business
On December 11, 2018, Trump was asked by Reuters if he would intervene in Meng’s case.
He reportedly responded: “If I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made – which is a very important thing – what’s good for national security, I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary.”
In their written application to have Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes throw out the extradition case, Meng’s lawyers said Trump’s remarks were among repeated and “unequivocal” threats to intervene in her case “in order to leverage her prosecution for political purposes”.
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“These statements, offensive and ominous on their own, are made all the more intimidating due to [Trump’s] history of interference in other recent high-profile criminal prosecutions. This conduct is deeply offensive to the rule of law and the integrity of the judicial process,” they wrote.
Trump had been “intent on using the Applicant, and her case, as a bargaining chip in a trade dispute unrelated to the merits of the charges against her”.
Peck said on Wednesday that the US had been campaigning to ruin Huawei as part of the trade war with China, and although Trump was no longer president, trade negotiations were ongoing.
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“The notion that a person’s liberty can be used … to advance a commercial transaction is anathema to our justice system [and] this process … it is a notion that strikes at the heart of human dignity,” Peck said.
Biden had said the US supported the release of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, two Canadians detained by China on espionage charges a few days after Meng’s arrest. “Human beings are not bargaining chips,” Peck quoted Biden as saying.
He cast this as “in no way a repudiation” of Trump’s former remarks about Meng, but as a recognition of their seriousness.
Holmes interjected. “You’re assuming that the [Biden] comment is directed to Ms Meng’s situation, but surely one can read these words as not directed at her situation, but what they are, on their face directed to – the two detained Canadians,” the judge said.
Peck responded that he was anticipating that the Canadian government’s lawyers would cite Biden’s remarks as a repudiation of Trump’s.
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In their written response, the Canadian government’s lawyers said: “[Statements] by a president no longer in office, about a possible intervention in this case that never occurred, purportedly to achieve a trade deal that has long since been successfully negotiated – have no past, present or prospective impact on these proceedings.”
But another of Meng’s lawyers, Isabel Schurman, rejected that suggestion on Wednesday, saying it could not be argued that the situation was moot because Trump was no longer the US president. Trump had made his remarks in his capacity as president, and nothing Biden did could change that, she said.
“The damage was done the day the words were uttered … this issue can never be moot,” Schurman said.
Trudeau, too, had apparently supported the use of Meng as a “bargaining chip”, Meng’s lawyers repeatedly asserted. They cited December 2019 remarks by Trudeau that “the United States should not sign a final and complete agreement with China that does not settle the question of Meng Wanzhou and the two Canadians [Kovrig and Spavor]”.
Meng lawyer Mona Duckett said Trudeau’s remarks “grossly aggravated” the abuse of process suffered by Meng.
In his response, Canadian government lawyer Robert Frater said Trump’s remarks lacked substance, and were non-specific and “anodyne”. “Looked at objectively, there is nothing to them,” Peck said.
“That is the crux of their case and there is not very much there at all,” he said of Meng’s defence.
Instead of representing a threat to Meng, the true nature of Trump’s comments to Reuters were to suggest she might have been in line for an unjust “windfall”, in the form of termination of her case, to facilitate a US-China trade deal, Frater and his team said in a written submission.
At the hearing, Frater pointed Holmes to a series of remarks from top officials in Trump and Biden’s administrations that disavowed political interference in Meng’s case; Trump’s remarks therefore had to be viewed in the context of these subsequent remarks.
“All of the relevant actors in this … are on the same page. That [is] a material change in circumstance,” he said, adding “you have to look at in its totality”.
The behaviour of Trump and others in the political arena represents one aspect of the argument that Meng is the victim of an abuse of process, deserving of a stay in the extradition proceedings. In another such argument presented on Monday, her lawyers said US prosecutors misled the court by presenting it with an incomplete record of the case, that omitted details about what HSBC knew of Huawei’s Iran dealings.
Frank Addario, also acting for Meng, had told the court that HSBC bankers “fully knew” that Huawei controlled the accounts of affiliates through which it did business in Iran, undermining US claims that she defrauded the bank by allegedly lying about the relationships.
Frater had said on Monday these were arguments to be made at a trial, not an extradition hearing, telling Holmes that Meng’s lawyers were trying to distract her.
The case was adjourned until Thursday morning.
Further hearings in the extradition case are scheduled to continue until mid-May. But appeals could drag out the process for years.
In the meantime, Meng has been living under partial house arrest in a C$13 million (US$10.3 million) Vancouver mansion, one of two homes she owns in the city.
