BOSTON — Federal prosecutors on Thursday dropped the government’s charges against Gang Chen, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a high-profile setback to the China Initiative, a nearly three-year-old government effort designed to deter scientists from using sensitive data. technology to China.
dr. Chen was arrested on January 14, 2021, during President Donald J. Trump’s last full week in office, and charged with a form of subsidy fraud, concealing his ties to Chinese government agencies in applications for $2.7 million in grants from the US Department of Energy in 2017. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Prosecutors filed a motion on Thursday to dismiss those charges, saying the government has been given new information in the course of its investigation and “can no longer meet its burden of proof at trial”. Judge Patti B. Saris of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts is expected to rule on the motion shortly.
The arrest of Dr. Chen was front page news in Boston, a center of scientific research. It was met with protest from many of Dr. Chen’s colleagues in academia, who said prosecutors had gone too far, blurring the line between grant disclosure violations and more serious crimes such as espionage or intellectual property theft.
In recent weeks, officials at the Department of Energy have told prosecutors that the Department is transferring the grant money to Dr. Chen would have admitted even had he revealed the Chinese ties, casting doubt on the basis of the charges, according to those familiar with the matter.
“Today is a great day,” said Dr. Chen, Robert Fisher. “The government has finally acknowledged what we have been saying all along: Professor Gang Chen is an innocent man. Our defense was never based on legal technicalities. Our defense was this: Gang did not commit any of the offenses he was accused of. Point.”
Mr. Fisher credited witnesses who “came forward and told the government how badly they misunderstood the details surrounding scientific and academic collaboration,” saying “without them, this case would probably still be going on.”
The step for resignation comes as the Justice Department reviews the China Initiative, an effort launched under the Trump administration that has come under criticism for picking scientists of Chinese heritage and setting the mood for cooling joint research.
Wyn Hornbuckle, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said last week that the ministry was “reviewing our approach to countering threats from the PRC government,” referring to China.
“We expect to complete the assessment and provide additional information in the coming weeks,” he said.
The initiative has led to numerous cases of grant fraud against academic researchers — about a dozen appearing on the department’s website — and pleas and convictions, including the conviction of Harvard chemist Charles Leiber last month.
But the first case to reach the trial stage, against Anming Hu, a professor of engineering at the University of Tennessee, ended in acquittal last September after a judge ruled the government had provided insufficient evidence that Dr. Hu intended to defraud financiers. The Justice Department has dropped seven cases against investigators in the past months.
The case against Dr. A naturalized U.S. citizen since 2000, Chen is the most prominent rejected to date, targeting an elite scientist who received solid support from his university.
At a press conference the morning of Dr. Chen’s arrest, Andrew E. Lelling, then the federal prosecutor in Boston, said that “the charges of the complaint imply that this was not just about greed, but loyalty to China.” Joseph R. Bonavolanta, the FBI’s special agent in Boston, said that Dr. Chen “knowingly defrauded at least $19 million in federal grants.”
However, when the charges were filed five days later, they were more limited.
dr. Chen was charged with two counts of wire fraud for failing to disclose seven connections to the Department of Energy while applying for a $2.7 million grant to study heat conduction in polymer structures and in a subsequent progress report. The links included serving as a “fourth overseas expert advisor” to the Chinese government, an “assessment expert” for the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and an advisor to the Chinese Scholarship Council, among others.
He was also charged with failing to disclose a Chinese bank account with more than $10,000 and making false statements to government officials in his grant disclosures.
In recent talks, Department of Energy officials told prosecutors that the tapes Dr. Chen would not have prevented the agency from extending the grant money, according to two people familiar with the matter.
According to a few former officials, who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing case, the case entered its final stages in the hectic days after the Jan. 6 riots and before President Biden was sworn in. The department’s National Security Division had about 48 hours to review the charges before Dr. Chen was arrested, which is unusual given the high-profile nature of the case, officials said.
In a statement, Mr. Fisher, Dr. Chen, a partner at Nixon Peabody, that the scientist had not withheld any commitments from the government in China.
“He’s never been on a talent show,” said Mr. Fisher. “He was never a foreign scientist for Beijing. He revealed everything he had to reveal and he never lied to the government or anyone else.”
Biden officials have met with representatives of the China initiative’s sharpest critics, Asian-American rights groups and universities, to discuss possible changes to the program.
In the coming weeks, the name “China Initiative” could be dropped, and the cases may no longer be packaged as a separate group, but re-included in the caseload of the Department’s National Security Division, according to current and former Justice Department officials. After the initial discussion about offering amnesty in the pending subsidy fraud cases, officials are leaning towards individual resolution of the cases, officials said.
One of those urging the Justice Department to withdraw from prosecutions based on grant disclosures is Mr. Lelling himself, who now has a private practice in Boston.
In a post on LinkedIn last month, he wrote that he believed the China initiative was intended to fight espionage, but that it had “drifted and, in a number of key ways, lost focus”.
“You don’t want people to be afraid of collaboration,” he said in an interview. “There is no question that the China Initiative has created a climate of fear among researchers. That’s one reason DOJ should take a step back.”
However, he added that prosecutions of academics had done some good, prompting researchers to be much more transparent about their Chinese funding.
“If you were looking for general deterrence, it’s achieved in spades — we’ve terrified the entire research community,” he said. “What is deterrence? You’re not speeding because you’re afraid of getting a ticket. Deterrence is about fear.”
Friends and colleagues say the prosecution had a profound effect on Dr. Chen, who was director of MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, a position that involved raising funds abroad for a series of university research projects.
“Questioning his loyalty is an outrage and reminds us of dark periods in history,” reads a letter published last year by 25 current and former MIT faculty members. It went on to say that there were “a lot of MIT faculties and students of Chinese descent who feel targeted, anxious and intimidated.”
A GoFundMe page published shortly after Dr. Chen was posted by his daughter Karen, raised $400,000 in three days. She wrote on the page that unused funds would be donated to charities that help other scientists facing persecution.
“My father is determined to challenge these charges because of the danger they pose to the wider academic community and all Chinese Americans,” she wrote.
Yoel Fink, an MIT professor who helped organize the letter-writing campaign, said the dismissal of the charges against Dr. Chen “raises real questions about the use of these weapons that we have given law enforcement, and whether the use of these weapons is justified.”
“These are very powerful weapons,” he said. “All of us, when those weapons are pointed at you, you disintegrate. What questions can we ask now? What kind of reckoning, what kind of responsibility can we expect when innocent people are hurt by these weapons?”
