Harvard University professor Charles Lieber (left) leaves federal court with his lawyer Marc Mukasey Tuesday in Boston. Lieber is charged with hiding his ties to a Chinese-run recruitment program. His trial is the latest bellwether in the U.S. Justice Department’s controversial effort to crack down on economic espionage by China. (Photo: Michael Dwyer/AP)
Opening statements began Wednesday in the trial against a Harvard professor accused of lying about being in China’s talent recruitment program, with prosecutors telling the jury the scholar “threatened the integrity” of federal research grants by failing to disclose his financial ties to a Chinese university.
Defense attorney Marc Mukasey, who represents Charles Lieber, noted it’s not illegal to take part in China’s Thousand Talents Program, a program the country launched in 2008 to recruit academics in science from overseas but which the Department of Justice says China uses to steal U.S. technological secrets. Mukasey painted his client’s relationship with a Wuhan university as typical of professors who travel for cross-border research and said he was a victim of an unjust criminal prosecution.
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