NYPD Officer Who Was Accused of Spying for China Is Vindicated

Patricia Hurtado
·3 min read
10

(Bloomberg) -- Federal prosecutors dropped their case against a New York City police officer they charged with spying on ethnic Tibetans for China, an embarrassing reversal after they fought to keep him in custody.

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US District Judge Eric Komitee granted their request to dismiss the indictment against Baimadajie Angwang at a hearing in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, on Thursday, after prosecutors said they had developed new evidence in the case.

Komitee praised the prosecutors for serving the interests of justice in dropping the charges but criticized them for refusing to release Angwang as the case proceeded. He noted that Angwang’s lawyer John Carman had battled for release after his client’s September 2020 arrest. Angwang was freed in February 2021.

“All of us well remember, of course, the fanfare with which this case was brought initially and the fairly protracted litigation over Mr. Angwang’s release,” the judge said. “Everyone in the room owes a debt of gratitude to Mr. Carman for litigating and relitigating this issue. We’d be sitting in a very different position today had Mr. Angwang been incarcerated during the duration of this case.”

Marine Corps Veteran

After court, Angwang stood in the rain, struggling to compose himself.

“I just want to say thank you for coming,” he said. “Thanks for all the people who trusted me, who believed me since the beginning — my family, my friends, my Marine Corps brothers, my NYPD colleagues. Thank you, especially, my attorney, Mr. Carman.”

Carman said Angwang served in the US Marine Corps in Afghanistan.

Angwang, 36, a naturalized US citizen born in China, was charged in 2020 with acting as an unregistered foreign agent, along with wire fraud, making false statements and obstruction of a national security background investigation by the US Defense Department. He faced as many as 55 years in prison had he been convicted.

Read More: New York City Cop Spied on Tibetans for China, U.S. Says

Prosecutor Matthew Haggans said at Thursday’s hearing that the US had “determined it’s appropriate to seek dismissal based on the interests of justice.”

Close Call

Asked by the judge if he could explain the government’s reasons for dropping the case without disclosing classified information, he said “we’re limited in the information we can proffer” but that the decision was based partly on “an assessment of information developed subsequent to the charges.”

Angwang was scheduled to go on trial in July, but earlier this month prosecutors said they had obtained “additional evidence bearing on the charges” and wrote to Komitee asking for the dismissal hearing.

Carman said after court that his client “is not and he has never been an agent for the People’s Republic of China, nor has he entered into any type of agreement with the government of our country in order to induce them to dismiss the indictment.”

“I don’t think that anybody’s really in a position to talk about it,” he said of what made the US decide to drop the case, noting that the government had been “very sparing” in describing the reasons.

John Marzulli, a spokesman for the US attorney’s office in Brooklyn, which brought the case, declined to comment on the outcome.

‘Entirely Trumped Up’

At the time of the charges, the Chinese Foreign Ministry called them “entirely trumped up” and said “the attempts by the US side to smear Chinese diplomatic missions in the US will never succeed.”

The Chinese Embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to an email Thursday seeking comment on the dismissal.

“The truth is,” Angwang’s lawyer said after court, “Mr. Angwang was innocent from the very beginning.”

The case was US v. Angwang, 20-cr-442, US District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn).

(Updates with remarks by US, judge, Angwang and his lawyer and with further background.)

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