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CAPAC Chair Statement on Retrial of Dr. Anming Hu After Mistrial Based on False Evidence

July 30, 2021

Washington, D.C. — After FBI agents admitted under oath to knowingly building a case on falsified evidence, resulting in a mistrial, the US Government today announced that they would be retrying Dr. Anming Hu.  Rep. Judy Chu, Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, expressed her outrage that the Department of Justice would continue to press its flawed case, which is based on racial profiling.  Tried as part of the problematic “China Initiative,” which presumes Chinese scientists and researchers to be possible spies based only on ethnicity, Dr. Hu, a Canadian researcher working at the University of Tennessee Knoxville since 2013, was accused of spying for China based on a paperwork filing error and the FBI’s admitted lies.  Chair Rep. Judy Chu, who has called for a halt to the China Initiative, issued the following statement:

“Instead of the normal process of beginning with a crime and searching for a suspect, the FBI has, through its China Initiative, started with racially profiled suspects and searched for a crime.  Many of the FBI’s cases have been flawed from the start, evident in the number of cases that have been dropped without any explanation, and despite the incredible harm done to those whose lives have been turned upside down by these investigations. The case of Dr. Anming Hu is the most glaring example of how investigations rooted in racial profiling lead to flimsy cases that cannot stand up in court. Worse, in order to justify this investigation, we know that FBI agents have falsified evidence. Yet instead of accepting that Dr. Hu does not in any way present a threat to our national security, the DOJ is disappointingly doubling down, pressing for a retrial to justify their fruitless investigation. We must take national security threats seriously, but the China Initiative does not work, and has threatened a return to prejudice as a cornerstone of policy. Unless the DOJ has new evidence against Dr. Hu, this case must be dropped and the China Initiative halted.”