The Liberty Daily 
(The Epoch Times)—A Chinese-American who allegedly operated an overseas Chinese police station in New York City admitted to opening the police station and to his link to Chinese state security in interviews with the FBI in the fall of 2022, Assistant United States Attorney Lindsey Oken said in opening statements at his trial Wednesday.
Lu Jianwan, 64, an American citizen, also known as Harry Lu and the former head of the American ChangLe Association, admitted he had a handler in China’s main security and law enforcement organization, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), in interviews with the FBI in October and December of 2022, prosecutors said.
Lu is charged with conspiring to act as an agent of the Chinese government, and with failing to register as a foreign agent. He is also charged with obstruction of justice for deleting his communications with China’s MPS.
Oken said Lu also admitted to the FBI that he communicated via Chinese messaging app WeChat with the MPS. After meeting with the FBI, Lu allegedly deleted messages from those communications. Oken said the FBI was able to recover some of these messages from other devices, and the government will present them at trial.
Appearing in a black suit and a light blue tie, Lu seemed calm and at ease as his trial started Wednesday in the Brooklyn borough of New York City in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), anyone acting on behalf of a foreign government is required to declare their association by filing documentation with the FARA office at the Department of Justice.
In his opening statement, Lu’s attorney, John Carman, said, “Harry Lu was arrested for failing to file a form,” and belittled the obstruction charge as being about a missing WeChat message. Carman said the case is one of “guilt by association,” arguing that Lu did nothing wrong, but merely associated and communicated with officials of the Chinese government, which the Department of Commerce has officially designated as an adversary.
Carman told the jury that Lu opened the service center to fill a need of the Chinese community: driver’s license renewals in China. He said that in 2021, traveling back to China was impossible or could require waiting weeks in quarantine. So, according to Carman, Lu set up computer stations at the offices of the hometown organization American ChangLe Association, where local residents could process the renewal of their license and meet on a Zoom call with motor vehicle officials back in Fujian Province, China. The alternative, to let their licenses lapse, would require them to restart the licensing process, requiring them to re-apply and retake a road test, according to Carman.
“If he was an agent, he was an agent for local people,” said Carman, who disputed that Lu was operating under the control of the Chinese government.
“Is he tasked? or asked? The difference is literally just a ‘t’,” said Carman.
Prosecutors said they will show evidence of video conferences with Chinese officials where they tasked Lu with assignments, as well as WeChat messages with instructions from Ministry of Public Security officials back in China.
Oken said the overseas police station started small, processing Chinese driver’s license renewals for the Chinese expatriate community. Oken noted that even if all the office processed were driver’s licenses, it was still illegal. Under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, any official representative of China’s government is required to register with the United States Attorney General.
Lu Jianwang stood outside the courthouse before his trial began with an assembly of supporters carrying signs that read, “No Bias, No Profiling,” “We Love America,” “Chinese Americans are Americans,” and “Stop Racial Profiling in our Community.”
Prosecutors raised concerns about the group standing outside the courthouse because jurors arriving for duty would be forced to walk past them. Prosecutors said they were concerned this was a coordinated effort and “an attempt to send a message to the jury.”
Defense counsel dismissed the idea that there was a coordinated effort on the part of the defense team.
Many in the group continued to the courtroom to observe the trial.
