The alleged police station scheme in New York City: Agents of the Chinese government, obstructing justice and a 911 call from the United States

The police station was in New York City’s Chinatown. The men are charged with conspiring to act as agents of the Chinese government and obstructing justice.

They are expected to appear in federal court in New York on Monday, according to John Marzulli, a spokesman for the US Attorney in the Eastern District of New York. The police station has been shut down since a search warrant was executed at the location last fall, the spokesman said.

According to the justice department, all 34 are believed to be in China. The officers were part of a project to change the perception of the People’s Republic of China.

Prosecutors say the defendants, all part of a specialized task force that worked out of a police facility in Beijing, also used social media to spread Chinese government propaganda on subjects including racial justice protests in the U.S., Russia’s war against Ukraine and human rights issues in Hong Kong. The defendants are believed to be living in China.

The alleged police station scheme is seen as another example of China’s growing global reach, perceived threat to the United States and its values, and willingness to curtail political enemies wherever they might be.

The FBI was told by a victim that their car was broken into after the person giving a pro-democracy speech because they had recieved threatening phone calls and social media messages from people who they believed were associated with the Chinese government.

Lu told the FBI that he established the office to help Chinese people in the US with their re-interpretation of Chinese government documents. Lu told investigators during the interview that Chen acted as the primary point of contact with officials back in China.

According to court documents, Chen initially denied having contact with the Chinese government, but later changed his mind and said he’d never met the Chinese government.

The investigators said that during the interview Chen took a seven-minute bathroom break in which an agent warned him not to use his phone in the bathroom. When agents searched the phone, they found that chat logs with officials had been cleared.

U.S. citizens arrested in a “coverup” crime against China, and a top official in the Justice Department’s National Security Division

While China has police patrol agreements with several nations, like Italy and South Africa, reports of the posts being covert has led to investigations in at least 13 other countries.

“This is a blatant violation of our national sovereignty,” Michael Driscoll, the head of New York’s FBI field office, said at a news conference announcing the cases.

The men, identified as “Harry” Lu Jianwang, 61, of the Bronx, and Chen Jinping, 59, of Manhattan, both U.S. citizens, were arrested at their homes on Monday morning. A lawyer for Lu declined to comment. A lawyer for Chen was left with an email seeking comment.

“New York City is home to New York’s finest: the NYPD,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace, the top federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, whose office brought the cases. “We don’t need or want a secret police station in our great city.”

In recent years the Justice Department officials have prioritized prosecutions of what is known as “transnational repression,” in which foreign governments attempt to intimidate and silence people in the U.S.

The Justice Department charged more than a half dozen people with working on behalf of the Chinese government in a campaign to get a New Jersey man back into China, during a time when the relationship between the countries was strained. In January, the Justice Department charged three men in an alleged plot that originated in Iran to kill an Iranian American author and activist who has spoken out against human rights abuses there.

David Newman, a top official in the Justice department’s national security division, said that the law protects all of us equally.

The National Security Division of the Department of Justice considers the PRC to be a threat to America’s democracy because it exports authoritarian ways to stifle free expression.

In a separate scheme announced Monday, the Justice Department charged 34 officers in the Ministry of Public Security with creating and using thousands of fake social media accounts on Twitter and other platforms to harass dissidents abroad.

The Washington Post is Not a Foreign Intelligence Agency: How China Steps Up Tensions with the New York City Attacks on January 8th

According to authorities, Jin acted as the primary liaison with Chinese government law enforcement and intelligence services, constantly responding to requests by the Chinese government to block users on the video communications platform.

The revelations by authorities in New York on Monday are already having a detrimental impact on China’s already tarnished reputation in Washington and will further complicate efforts by the Biden administration to defuse spiraling tensions with Xi.

This is not unsurprising activity by a foreign intelligence agency on foreign soil; Washington’s penchant for engaging democracy activists in totalitarian countries has, for instance, long been seen as meddling by repressive governments.

The bureau’s work, however, involves fighting organized crime, combating terrorism and drug trafficking, and forging links with local police and law enforcement. It isn’t designed to monitor US expats and police their political activity.

According to a new report by Madrid-based human rights group Safeguard Defenders shared with CNN last year, President Xi Jinping’s government set up more than 100 such posts to monitor the activity of large Chinese diasporas, using bilateral security arrangements as a cover.

Beijing has denied such allegations, arguing the offices help expat citizens with services like the issuing of new drivers licenses. Any activity that goes beyond consular services and targets Chinese exiles would infringe international law.

“This is absolutely absurd that the Chinese Communist Party thinks that they can set up their own police station in a place like New York City,” Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton, a member of the new House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, told CNN.

“The story out there that the Americans and Chinese are ratcheting up tensions is really not accurate. This is China stepping up tensions. The Chinese Communist Party are trying to exact their repressive regime all over the world.

They follow the flight of a suspected Chinese spy balloon across the North American mainland earlier this year that was viewed by many Americans as an insult and was a first tangible sign of how a potential new Cold War could unfold with a new superpower foe.

Harth is not surprised that the troll farms mentioned in the criminal cases are related, but didn’t see evidence that they were operated from within the MPS’s secret facilities overseas. She says that her organization’s public communications are frequently flooded with criticisms from shady accounts that she’s long suspected were organized by the Chinese state. She says that it is very tellingly troll or bot work.