Under a directive to catch Chinese spies, federal authoritiesmonitored Anming Hu for more than a year, found no evidence of espionage and manufactured a case against the University of Tennessee researcher anyway, his attorney says.

"The (U.S. Department of Justice) wanted a feather in its cap with an economic espionage case, so they ignored the facts and the law, destroyed the career of a professor with three PhDs in nanotechnology and now expects the court to follow their narrative," attorney Philip Lomonaco wrote in a brief asking a judge to dismiss the charges against Hu.

A mechanical engineering professor at UT Knoxville, Hu was arrested in February and suspended from his job after an FBI investigation. A grand jury returned an indictment accusing Hu of holding a dual professorship witha Chinese university and concealing that position from UT as he worked on research projects funded by grant money from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Anming Hu(Photo: Provided / UTK)

A federal lawenacted in 2011prohibits NASA from using funds to "collaborate or coordinate bilaterallyin any way withChina or any Chinese-owned company." Hu faces three counts of wire fraud and three counts of making false statements amidallegations he repeatedly lied to violate that funding restriction and defraud NASA.

Although prosecutors have argued the case could involve matters of national security, they have not publicly accused Hu of espionage.

His attorney says he's no spy, and that he never meant to deceive anyone.In Lomonaco's telling, Hu is nothing more than an innocent researcher who tried his best to follow a rule so vague that neither UT,the FBI nor NASA seemed to fully understand it.The charges should be dismissed for that reason, Lomonacowrote, and because Hulistened to a UT official who said the restriction didn't apply to faculty.

As of Wednesday, prosecutors had not filed a response to the brief, which was filed last week in U.S. District Court in Knoxville. The FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee declined to comment. Representatives for UT did notreturn a request for comment.

Hu moved from Canada to Knoxville in 2013, when he began working as an associate professor at the University of Tennessee. He started working that same year for the Beijing University of Technology's Institute of Laser Engineering, the indictment states. The public university is owned by the Chinese government.

A naturalized Canadian citizen awaiting a green card in the U.S., Hu is under house arrest and has been confined tohis home in southwest Knox County. His wife is living in Canada, and hisson attends UT Knoxville.

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While working at UT, Huremotely supervised graduate students overseas, worked on projects sponsored by the Chinese government and oversaw the operation of a lab in Beijing, according to the indictment.

"My group there is focusing on super-resolution nano manufacturing and printable electronics," Hu wrote in an email to a U.S. professor in 2017.

The available evidencesends mixed messages about whether and to what extent Hu may have tried to hide his second job. Prosecutors say he submitted rsum to UT that omitted any mention of his position at the Beijing university, an allegation Lomonaco calls an"administrative issue."Prosecutors also say Hu failed to mention his second job on conflict of interest forms he submitted to UT, while Lomonaco says the job didn't rise to the level of a conflict under UT's policies.

Testimony showed Hu talked openly about his work with the Beijing university while attending Knoxville Chinese Christian Church. The public website for Beijing University of Technology listed Hu as a professor, according to the indictment.His connection tothe university was spelled out in more than a dozen research papers and patent applications filed in China while he worked at UT. And he discussedhis work overseasin emails to Chinese and American professors alike.

Hu even mentioned his work in Beijing to two FBI agents who showed up to his office at UT in April 2018, according to Lomonaco's brief. The agents asked Hu whether he was involved in China's Thousand Talents Program, whichseeks to recruit American researchers. They didn't seem "overly interested," Lomonaco wrote, when Hu talked about his work on a NASA grant.

Four months later, in August 2018, FBI agents began meeting with UT and NASA officials and began "an extensive, clandestine surveillance" of Hu, Lomonaco wrote. The file on Hu was "categorized as 'economic espionage.'"

Lomonaco suggested federal authorities brought a case against Hu due to the so-called China Initiative. Then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the initiative Nov. 1, 2018, and described it as an effort among the Department of Justice, the FBI and U.S. attorneys to prosecute state-backed Chinese who steal trade secrets and confidential information from American companies, labs and universities.

"Today, we see Chinese espionage not just taking place against traditional targets like our defense and intelligence agencies, but against targets like research labs and universities, and we see Chinese propaganda disseminated on our campuses," Sessions said after announcing charges against a pair of Chinese and Taiwanese companies accused of stealing trade secrets from an Idaho company.

Cases involving questions of Chinese intellectual property theft are not unheard of in East Tennessee. In 2008, a federal jury convicted University of Tennessee professor emeritusJ. Reece Roth under the Arms Export Control Act after he allowed foreign graduate students to work with him on an Air Force contract and took a laptop containing classified documents on a trip to China. Last year, a grand jury in Greeneville indicteda Chinese national and an American on charges of conspiring to steal trade secrets from several companies in order to start their own company in China.

Virginia Rep. Frank Wolf referenced Chinese attempts to steal intellectual property, as well as the country'shuman rights record, in championing the 2011 law that included the restriction on NASA's funding of projects tied to China.

Attempting to paint the law as too vague to be enforced, Lomonaco cited changesto the law and to NASA's guidance about the law. He also attached as an exhibit a 2013letter Wolf wrote to NASA's administrator after a staffer incorrectly told Chinese nationals the law prevented them from attending a conference at a NASA facility.

"It places no restrictions on activities involving individual Chinese nationals unless those nationals are acting as official representatives of the Chinese government," wrote Wolf, who is now retired and declined to comment for this story.

Workers repaint the NASA meatball logo on the side of the 525-foot Vehicle Assembly Building last week. NASA astronauts are scheduled to head to the International Space Station from KSC aboard a SpaceX rocket Wednesday.(Photo: Craig Bailey/FLORIDA TODAY)

The charges against Hu stem from two research projects he worked on, for which UT sought and obtained grant money from NASA. The space agency paid UT about $105,000 for the projects, and Lomonaco has stressed that Hu didn't receive any of that money.

In January 2016, Hu was preparing to submit a proposal to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a federally funded research center that operatesunder NASA and the California Institute of Technology. Hu wanted to work on a project with a professor at a laboratory in Hefei, China, and he submitted to UT employees a letter of commitment from the professor.

When the UT grant administrator told him he would need to complete a "China Assurance document," Hu seemed confused, writing in an email: "For China Assurance: are you talking about the Hefei National Radiation Facilities, right? I include one letter. Does it solve this concerning?"

"Anming, regarding the China Assurance, NASA requires you to include a signed document stating you assure you will comply with the Chinese Funding Restrictions," the administrator wrote back, according to the brief. "However, UTK always includes a special copy stating that, as we understand it, this restriction does not apply to faculty, staff, and students."

The university went on to submit the proposal to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It did not include the letter of commitment from the professor at Hefei National Radiation Facilities, saying it would violate the China Assurance.

The indictment states this exchange notified Huof the NASAfunding restriction, and that he went on to participate in NASA-funded projects anyway.

"Through his fraudulent representations and omissions to UTK about his affiliation with (the Beijing university), Huknowingly and willfully caused UTK to falsely certify to NASA and to NASA contractors that UTK was in compliance with NASA's China Funding Restriction regarding NASA-funded projects that UTK sought and obtained on Hu's behalf," the indictmentreads.

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But Lomonaco says the exchange was anything but clear.

"Being told by UT's grant administrator the restriction did not apply to UT faculty is strong exculpatory evidence of not only the confusion experienced by Prof. Hu, but strong evidence of his lack of intent to deceive," he wrote. "The only specific thing Prof. Hu was told was that the restriction did not apply to him. Why would he even try to commit fraud if the restriction did not apply to him?"

Lomonaco is asking a judge find the NASA restriction law "void for vagueness," or to toss the charges against Hu under the legal doctrine of "entrapment by estoppel" when a defendant believes an official who tells them their conduct is legal.

The case is set to go to trial Dec. 1.

EmailTravis Dorman attravis.dorman@knoxnews.comand follow himon Twitter @travdorman. If you enjoy Travis' coverage, support strong local journalism by subscribing for full access to all our content on every platform.

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Originally posted here:
University of Tennessee professor accused of hiding his Chinese job wants case tossed - Knoxville News Sentinel