A panel of federal judges has overturned the conviction of Franklin Tao, the former University of Kansas (KU) chemical engineer who has spent nearly 5 years battling allegations that he defrauded the U.S. government by hiding his research ties to China.
Tao was one of the first academic scientists charged under an initiative launched in November 2018 by then-President Donald Trump to combat Chinese economic espionage. While still a tenured KU faculty member, he was arrested in August 2019 and spent 1 week in jail. In April 2022, a federal jury convicted him of three counts of wire fraud as well as making a false statement to KU about his ties to Fuzhou University in connection with grants from the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The university fired him after the jury decision, but 5 months later U.S. District Court Senior Judge Julie Robinson threw out the fraud convictions. And in January 2023 she rejected the government’s request for jail time and a stiff fine as a penalty for the false statement.
Tao appealed the jury’s decision on the remaining count, and yesterday the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver said he was right. “We reverse his conviction … and agree with Tao that the government offered insufficient evidence for a rational jury to find that his statement to his employer was material to any DOE or NSF decision” affecting the status of his grants, the panel ruled in a 2-to-1 decision.
The government had argued that the agencies used Tao’s statements to KU in the fall of 2018 in weighing “whether to fund or continue funding” his research. In her dissent, Senior Judge Mary Briscoe wrote that “the test for materiality is satisfied if information conveyed by Tao’s representations merely had the capacity of influencing the agencies’ decisions.”
But the two-judge majority rejected her assertion, pointing out that Tao’s grants had been awarded before he filed his disclosure of research activities to KU and that he had no pending grant applications. In her ruling, Judge Nancy Moritz wrote that Briscoe offered “no evidence either agency required KU to report Tao’s relationship with Fuzhou University during the grant periods, much less that such information could have then influenced an agency decision.”
Tao’s 2-year probation was shortened to 1 year and ended in January. He is trying to reclaim his position at KU. And the latest ruling could bolster his argument.
“Dr. Tao is grateful that this long nightmare is finally over,” said his lawyer, Peter Zeidenberg of ArentFox Schiff, in a statement after the decision was handed down. “This was a misguided prosecution from the very 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.”
Zeidenberg said Tao’s effort to prove his innocence “has virtually bankrupted his family” and that he owes more than $1 million in legal fees. “Just as painful is the damage to his reputation caused by this reckless prosecution.”
Tao’s is one of many China Initiative cases against U.S. academics that have fallen apart in court. President Joe Biden’s administration officially ended the program in February 2022, saying the name was seen as unfairly targeting anyone of Chinese descent. But Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have campaigned for it to be reinstated.
More: https://www.science.org/content/article/court-exonerates-kansas-professor-china-research-fraud-case
