Meng Wanzhou’s lawyers exaggerated Trump’s remarks to get extradition request thrown out, court is told
- Canadian government lawyer Robert Frater says ‘no one has enjoyed a fairer hearing’ than the Huawei executive
- He says Meng’s lawyers resorted to a ‘conspiracy theory’ to support claims that she was the victim of an abuse of process
Former US president Donald Trump’s statements about the fraud case against Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou had been greatly exaggerated by her lawyers in an effort to have the American bid for her extradition thrown out, the Canadian justice department’s top lawyer said on Tuesday.
Robert Frater, chief general counsel with the department, also told Meng’s extradition hearing that her lawyers had resorted to a “conspiracy theory” about her alleged mistreatment by Canadian police and border officers to support their claims of an abuse of process.
“No one has enjoyed a fairer hearing than Ms Meng,” he later said.
Meng is wanted by the US to face trial for fraud, and her arrest at Vancouver International Airport on December 1, 2018 spawned a marathon extradition case that has reverberated from Beijing to Washington and Ottawa. It is now in its closing stages.
On Monday, Meng’s lead lawyer, Richard Peck, said that Trump had wanted an economic “ransom” for her, that he treated her as a “bargaining chip” and that the violations against Meng by authorities on both sides of the border threatened Canada’s rule of law.
But Frater, representing US interests in the extradition case, told the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Vancouver that Peck and his colleagues “greatly overstate the former president’s words”.
Trump had never used the words “ransom” or “bargaining chip” to describe Meng’s case, Frater said, and in arguing that the case against her had been politically tainted, her lawyers had failed to give the “full flavour” of Trump’s remarks.
“We agree with them that words have power, but your job is to look at the actual words …[and] the former president’s words did not stand alone,” Frater told Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes.
We say it is unreasonable to think that Canadian law enforcement officers … [would] conspire to abuse Ms Meng’s rights
On December 11, 2018, 10 days after Meng’s arrest, 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.”
He added that Meng’s lawyers had failed to show a “nexus” between the extradition case and Trump’s comments, and if indeed these had cast a “shroud” over the legal process, as they claimed, “a remedy should have been sought forthwith”.
The fact Meng’s lawyers did not immediately do so undermined their position, Frater said.
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Lawyers for Meng have argued that halting the proceedings is the only just remedy to four alleged “branches” of abuse: that Meng is the victim of a politically tainted process; that authorities involved in her arrest at the airport and her subsequent treatment had abused her Canadian Charter rights; that the US had tried to mislead the extradition court with faulty records of the case (ROCs); and that her prosecution violates international law.
Huawei extradition battle: Meng Wanzhou and her narrow flight path to freedom
Meng, who is Huawei’s chief financial officer and a daughter of company founder Ren Zhengfei, is accused of defrauding HSBC by lying to the bank about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran, thus putting the bank at risk of breaching US sanctions.
The fraud accusations, which Meng denies, centre on a PowerPoint presentation she made to a banker in a Hong Kong teahouse in 2013.
Meng’s lawyers have provided a 34-point list of alleged misconduct against Meng.
But Frater said that only one of those points approached actual misconduct: when Canadian border officers gave Meng’s electronic device passwords to police, in violation of privacy laws. Ultimately, though, Frater contended, that had caused no prejudice to Meng’s case.
Meng’s lawyers had initially tried to depict the handling of Meng by Canadian police and border officers as part of a covert criminal inquiry conducted at the behest of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, Frater said. But they had to drop this because they had not come close to proving it.
“We say it is unreasonable to think that Canadian law enforcement officers … would of their own volition, without direction or instruction from criminal investigators in the US, conspire to abuse Ms Meng’s rights,” Frater said.
Trump wanted ‘ransom’ for Meng Wanzhou, her lawyer says
He added: “The US-led conspiracy theory was needed as the glue … without it, this argument falls apart.”
The third-branch argument about the ROCs required a “logical leap from irrelevance to abuse … a precarious one that we urge you not to take”, while the fourth-branch claims about international law were a jurisdictional matter that is “primarily for the trial judge in the United States”, Frater said.
The legal test for misconduct deserving of a stay of proceedings required that prejudice against an accused person be “ongoing”, said Frater. None had been shown, and the request for a stay should be rejected, he said.
Frater and his colleagues said in a written submission: “Simply put, this case does not feature the type of conduct by the requesting state that is so intolerable that the court must distance itself from it.”
The hearing was adjourned until Wednesday.
After almost 1,000 days, the marathon extradition proceedings have entered their endgame with this final stretch of hearings. The court is scheduled to move to the committal process on Wednesday, which could last until August 20.
After that, Holmes will decide whether to release Meng, who has been under partial house arrest at one of her Vancouver homes, or recommend to Canada’s Justice Minister David Lametti that she be extradited to New York.
US acted ‘honourably’ in pursuit of Meng Wanzhou, extradition court is told
Experts have said that an appeal is likely whatever Holmes decides, potentially dragging out the process for years.
That could prolong what has been a bitter diplomatic dispute between China, the US and Canada over Meng’s treatment, which has infuriated Beijing.
On Wednesday, a Chinese court in northeastern Liaoning province sentenced Canadian Michael Spavor to 11 years in prison for espionage. Spavor and another Canadian Michael Kovrig were arrested in China days after Meng’s detention in Vancouver, raising speculation that they were held in retaliation by Beijing against Ottawa.
Canada’s ambassador to China Dominic Barton said earlier this week he had been given no indication of when Kovrig would be sentenced.
Additional reporting by Associated Press
