Appeals Court Voids Conviction of Researcher Over Hiding China Ties

This undated file photo provided by the University of Kansas shows researcher Feng "Franklin" Tao. Opening statements begin on March 22, 2022, in the trial of Tao, a researcher accused of concealing work he was doing for China while employed at the University of Kansas. Kelsey Kimberlin/University of Kansas via AP, File

A federal appeals court has reversed a criminal conviction against a former University of Kansas professor for concealing his ties to a university in China.

The Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2–1 on July 11 in favor of tossing out the criminal conviction against Feng “Franklin” Tao for making a false statement to the U.S. government by failing to disclose his affiliation with China’s Fuzhou University on a University of Kansas form. The majority concluded that federal prosecutors had provided insufficient evidence to support the charge against Mr. Tao.

Federal prosecutors originally charged Mr. Tao in August 2019. In June 2020, a 10-count superseding indictment was brought against him, charging him with seven counts of wire fraud and three more counts of making false statements to the U.S. government.

Mr. Tao was already employed by University of Kansas (KU) when, in 2018, he accepted a position as a “Changjiang scholar distinguished professor” at Fuzhou University. The prosecution centered around allegations that the professor behaved illegally in concealing the fact that he had taken a position at Fuzhou University while continuing his employment with KU.

While working for Fuzhou University, Mr. Tao handled six research contracts for KU, including for grants from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. government’s National Science Foundation (NSF).

In April 2022, a jury found Mr. Tao guilty of one count of making a false statement and three counts of wire fraud. U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson later dismissed the wire fraud counts, concluding that although Mr. Tao acted deceptively, prosecutors hadn’t shown sufficient evidence that he “obtained money or property through the alleged scheme to defraud, as required under the wire fraud statute.”

Judge Robinson sentenced Mr. Tao to time served without requiring him to pay an additional fine or restitution.

The July 11 appeals court decision now clears Mr. Tao of his last criminal conviction.

Writing for the court’s majority, Circuit Judge Nancy Moritz concluded that federal prosecutors did not sufficiently demonstrate that Mr. Tao’s alleged false statements were material to a government interest. Although prosecutors argued that Mr. Tao’s false statements implicated his work overseeing DOE- and NSF-funded research, Judge Moritz noted that both government offices had funded these research grants before Fuzhou University extended Mr. Tao a conflicting job offer.

“Both agencies received and funded the proposals before Tao submitted his institutional responsibilities form to KU in September 2018. And KU never applied for additional funding after he did so,” Judge Moritz wrote.

She wrote that federal prosecutors could not demonstrate that Mr. Tao’s statements were material because there was no new decision before the DOE and NSF by the time Mr. Tao began to take on work with Fuzhou University.

Peter Zeidenberg, an attorney representing Mr. Tao, said the case against his client had been misguided from the start.

“Even though there was not a scintilla of evidence that Dr. Tao was engaged in espionage or theft of trade secrets, the government nevertheless relentlessly investigated him and ultimately charged him with 10 felonies—all based on an alleged omission on a single internal form he submitted to the University of Kansas research office and which was never shared with any federal agency,” Mr. Zeidenberg said in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times.

Mr. Zeidenberg said his client is thankful to have “some measure of justice” after five years of legal battle. Still, the attorney said the legal process has left Mr. Tao with more than $1 million in unpaid legal fees and a damaged reputation.

The Epoch Times reached out for comment from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas, which led the case against Mr. Tao. The prosecution team did not respond by press time.

Mr. Tao was one of about two dozen academics who were charged as part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s “China Initiative.”

The DOJ began the initiative in 2018 to counter efforts to steal U.S. research and spy on the United States for the Chinese Communist Party. Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen announced in February 2022 that the DOJ had closed down this initiative amid concerns of a perceived anti-Chinese bias.