Thank you, HollyB.
DOJ abandons Trump-era program aimed at Chinese spying
Excerpt:
Feb. 23, 2022, 12:03 PM PST
By Pete Williams and Ken Dilanian
The Justice Department is ending its China Initiative, a program that Asian-American groups said contributed to bias against Chinese immigrants and Americans of Chinese descent and that resulted in some high-profile prosecutorial failures.
Launched under the Trump administration and intended to identify and prosecute Chinese threats to national security, it also led to criminal charges against researchers and academics that collapsed.
“Make no mistake. We will be relentless in defending our country from China,” said Matt Olsen, the assistant attorney general in charge of the national security division. But he said “a new approach is needed to tackle the most severe threats from a range of hostile nation-states.”
Olsen said a three-month review, including discussions with the FBI and other intelligence agencies, research agencies and universities, convinced him that the initiative was too narrowly focused. He said representatives of the Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities said the program contributed to a rise in bias against them.