NY Charges ‘Law Enforcement’ Officers for Working with China to Destroy Dissident Art

TOPSHOT - This picture taken on October 10, 2017 shows a party flag of the Chinese Communi
WANG ZHAO/AFP via Getty Images
Paul Bois

A federal grand jury indicted five men in Brooklyn this week for allegedly participating in a “transnational repression scheme” orchestrated by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to silence critics of the communist country in the United States.

According to the Justice Department, one of the defendants currently serves as a federal law enforcement officer while another is a retired federal law enforcement officer.

“Among other items, these defendants allegedly plotted to destroy the artwork of a PRC national residing in Los Angeles, who was critical of the PRC government and planted surveillance equipment in the artist’s workplace and car to spy on him from the PRC,” said the DOJ press release.

Fan “Frank” Liu and Matthew Ziburis of the PRC were arrested in March while another collaborator, Qiang “Jason” Sun, remains at large.

Liu and Ziburis were arrested pursuant to a criminal complaint in March 2022, while Sun remains at large. The indictment this week added two new defendants, Craig Miller and Derrick Taylor, both of whom worked in federal law enforcement. Per the press release:

Miller is a 15-year employee of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), currently assigned as a deportation officer to DHS’s Emergency Relief Operations in Minneapolis, and Taylor is a retired DHS law enforcement agent who presently works as a private investigator in Irvine, California.

Miller and Taylor are charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly destroying evidence after they were approached by FBI agents and asked about their procurement and dissemination of sensitive and confidential information from a restricted federal law enforcement database regarding U.S.-based dissidents from the PRC.

Both Miller and Taylor were arrested pursuant to a criminal complaint in June 2022.

Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew G. Olsen said that the five men sought to quash “free speech and political expression” in the United States on behalf of a foreign power.

“As charged, these individuals aided agents of a foreign government in seeking to suppress dissenting voices who have taken refuge here,” said Olsen.  The defendants include two sworn law enforcement officers who chose to forsake their oaths and violate the law.”

U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York said that U.S. law enforcement officers aided and abetted a “multifaceted campaign to silence, harass, discredit and spy on U.S. residents for exercising their freedom of speech.”

Among other charges, Peace alleged that the two officials provided to the PRC collaborators “confidential information about U.S. residents from a restricted law enforcement database” and then proceeded to destroy all evidence of their wrongdoing when confronted by law enforcement.

Read the full report here.

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