A dual U.S.-Israeli citizen who once lived in Maryland has been indicted for serving as a Chinese agent and working with Beijing in a 2016 plot to recruit a senior adviser to President-elect Donald Trump to push pro-China policies.
Gal Luft, a critic of President Biden and co-director of Institute for Analysis of Global Security in Gaithersburg, was charged in a November indictment unsealed Monday with eight criminal counts, including failure to register as an agent of another country. He was also charged with arms trafficking, violating Iranian sanctions laws and making false statements to federal agents.
Mr. Luft was arrested Feb. 17 in the Republic of Cyprus based on the charges in the indictment. However, he fled after being released on bond and is a fugitive, prosecutors said in announcing the case. Mr. Luft did not respond to an email request for comment.
The accused has also emerged as a figure in the controversy surrounding President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. Mr. Luft has accused Mr. Biden’s family of receiving millions of dollars from a Chinese energy interest in exchange for access and promoting its business lines.
The 58-page federal indictment details what prosecutors say was a plot by Chinese agents working with Mr. Luft to recruit an unnamed aide to Mr. Trump when he was president-elect in 2016.
The New York Post identified the aide on Twitter as former CIA Director R. James Woolsey. Mr. Woolsey, who was an adviser to Mr. Trump for a short period of time, did not respond to a request for comment. He and former Reagan security aide Robert McFarlane helped found Mr. Luft’s research group, and Mr. Woolsey resigned from the Trump transition team shortly before Mr. Trump took office in January 2017.
According to the indictment, Mr. Luft worked “to advance the interests of the People’s Republic of China” in the United States without registering as required under U.S. law.
“Specifically, Luft agreed with others to and did … covertly recruit and pay, on behalf of principals based in China, a former high-ranking U.S. government official, including while the former official was an adviser to the then-president-elect, to publicly support certain policies with respect to China,” the indictment said.
Among other charges, Mr. Luft allegedly worked with a Chinese national who was formerly home affairs secretary in Hong Kong and head of a non-governmental organization funded by a Chinese state-run energy company. The New York Post identified the Chinese national as Patrick Ho, who was sentenced to three years in prison in 2019 on bribery charges linked to CEFC China Energy Co. Ltd.
The person identified in the indictment as “Co-conspirator 1” was said to enjoy “very close relations with [Chinese] President Xi Jinping.”
The unnamed Chinese national reportedly made annual payments of $350,000 to Mr. Gal’s think tank. In exchange, a Chinese national was to be appointed to the group called the China Energy Fund Committee.
Mr. Luft is also charged with brokering deals with Chinese nationals, including “illicit arms deals involving Libya, United Arab Emirates and Kenya.” The arms deals violated the Arms Export Control Act, the indictment said.
Mr. Luft also was charged with brokering exports of Iranian oil to China.
Details of the plot to recruit a Trump adviser who could influence policy in favor of China began in September 2016, around the time when Mr. Woolsey was named as an adviser on China policy to Mr. Trump. Mr. Luft that same month notified the Chinese he had recruited an aide who would be paid by China.
The Chinese national then replied that Beijing is ready to pay the person and stated, “Our side is more than happy to have someone we know to be the channel with [first letter of then-presidential candidate’s last name].”
Mr. Luft then responded that the recruited aide “needs to be better educated and versed in our narrative so the other side doesn’t shape his views.”
Other communications indicated the Trump aide would be invited to China “undercover” after the Nov. 8, 2016, election. An email said the Trump aide was to lead the presidential transition team for international security, China and Iran policy.
China agreed to pay the Trump aide $6,000 a month to write articles for Chinese propaganda outlets prior to the 2016 presidential election, the indictment says, promoting “a grand bargain in which the U.S. accepts China’s political and social structure and commits not to disrupt it in any way in exchange for China’s commitment not to challenge the status quo in Asia.”
Several of the articles were published in the Chinese Communist Party-affiliated China Daily beginning in October 2016. A China Daily story from December 2016 quoted Mr. Woolsey telling a Washington forum on Mr. Xi’s Belt and Road development financing plan, “We want to joyfully participate with China in international trade operations and economic growth. I think we have no reason why China and the U.S. cannot be close and friendly nations.”
Mr. Luft “subverted foreign agent registration laws in the United States to seek to promote Chinese policies by acting through a former high-ranking U.S. government official; he acted as a broker in deals for dangerous weapons and Iranian oil; and he told multiple lies about his crimes to law enforcement,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams said in a statement this week.
