US Judge Sets January 2026 for Huawei Criminal Case

People arrive to attend the Huawei keynote address at the IFA 2020 Special Edition consumer electronics and appliances trade fair on the fair's opening day in Berlin, Germany, on Sept. 3, 2020. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

The U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) criminal case against China’s Huawei Technologies has been scheduled for January 2026 after negotiations on settlement ended in “an impasse,” according to reports.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Solomon said at a status conference in Brooklyn, New York, on Thursday that “it would be prudent to schedule a trial date,” given that settlement discussions resulted in an impasse.

U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly, who presides over the case, set January 2026 as “a placeholder” for the trial. Prosecutors said the trial could last about four to six months, Reuters reported.

Huawei’s lawyer said the company has a pending motion to split the case, seeking to separate the bank fraud charges from trade secret theft allegations. However, U.S. authorities suggested that the charges were linked.

The Chinese telecom giant was indicted in 2018 on bank fraud charges of misleading HSBC and other banks about its business in Iran, which is subject to U.S. sanctions.

In 2019, the DOJ unsealed two indictments against Huawei, its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, and several of the company’s subsidiaries.

In a 13-count indictment, the DOJ said Huawei misled a global bank and U.S. authorities about its relationship with a Hong Kong firm named Skycom Tech—an unofficial subsidiary of Huawei that conducted business in Iran.

In a separate 10-count indictment, the prosecutors accused Huawei of stealing trade secrets, committing wire fraud, and obstructing justice for allegedly stealing robotic technology from T-Mobile to test smartphones’ durability.

In 2020, the DOJ added more charges to the case, including that Huawei allegedly conspired to steal trade secrets from six U.S. technology companies and helped Iran track protesters during anti-government demonstrations in 2009.

Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou leaves her Vancouver home to attend her extradition hearing in the British Columbia Supreme Court in Vancouver, Canada, on Aug. 4, 2021. Don Mackinnon/AFP via Getty Images

Ms. Meng, the daughter of Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei, was arrested at Vancouver International Airport in December 2018 at the request of the United States. U.S. prosecutors accused her of involvement in a scheme to use the global banking system to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran.

Following her arrest, Chinese authorities detained two Canadians—Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor—and accused them of spying. The move was widely seen as a tactic often used by Beijing known as “hostage diplomacy.”

They were released after Ms. Meng struck a deferred prosecution agreement with U.S. prosecutors in 2021, in which she admitted to misleading global institutions about Huawei’s Iran business.

She pleaded not guilty to charges related to bank and wire fraud. In 2022, a federal judge in New York dismissed financial fraud charges against Ms. Meng.

Following the case, Huawei was placed on a U.S. trade blacklist in 2019 over national security concerns and human rights violations. The sanctions have restricted its access to critical U.S. technologies and crippled the firm’s smartphone business.

Cathy He, Eva Fu, and Reuters contributed to this report.