NEWS EXPLAINER 14 December 2021

Harvard chemist on trial: a guide to

the Charles Lieber case
As the trial begins, legal experts say it could have a big impact on the US government’s
controversial China Initiative.

Andrew Silver

Charles Lieber arrives at a federal courthouse in Boston, Massachusetts, for his trial. Credit: Brian
Snyder/Reuters
A highly-anticipated trial began today for star nanotechnology researcher Charles
Lieber, who stands accused by the US government of actions including lying about his
involvement in a Chinese government talent-recruitment programme, and failing to
disclose income from China on his tax returns. This is the second trial for an academic
accused of hiding ties to China since the Department of Justice (DOJ) launched a
controversial initiative in 2018 to prevent that country from using US resources for
political gain — and legal experts say its verdict might influence the prosecution of
future cases.

Lieber, who is on leave as chair of Harvard University’s chemistry and chemical biology
department, has pleaded not guilty to all charges. A high-profile researcher known for
developing nanomaterials for medicine and biology, he won the 2012 Wolf Prize in
Chemistry and was listed as a potential Nobel Prize winner by Thomson Reuters in
2008.

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Harvard chemistry chief’s
arrest over China links shocks
researchers
His arrest in January 2020 shocked scientists. “The
outcome [of the trial] is important and will be closely
watched to see if the government is able to persuade a
jury to return convictions for this type of case,” says Peter
Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor and a partner at
the law firm Arent Fox in Washington DC. The first trial of
a researcher following the launch of the DOJ’s China
Initiative resulted in an acquittal.

A lawyer for Lieber told Nature: “we will do our talking in

the courtroom”. But in a court filing, his legal team wrote that “the government will be
unable to prove, as to each and every count, that [Lieber] acted knowingly,
intentionally, or willfully, or that he made any material false statement”.

The District of Massachusetts US attorney’s office tells Nature it expects Lieber’s trial to
continue for about a week. Here’s what to watch for.
What’s the case against Lieber?
A key focus in Lieber's trial will be on false statements he allegedly made to federal
agencies. Prosecutors allege that Lieber lied to or misled the US Department of
Defense (DOD) and the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), from which he had
received at least US$15 million in grants since 2008. According to the government, he
made false statements about participating in a prominent Chinese talent-recruitment
programme known as the Thousand Talents Plan, which offered him a monthly salary
of up to $50,000, about $158,000 per year in personal and living expenses, and more
than $1.5 million in funding for a joint laboratory between Harvard University and the
Wuhan University of Technology (WUT). Participating in a foreign talent-recruitment
programme is not illegal, but knowingly and willfully making signficant false
statements to US government agencies is a crime.

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According to a court filing by prosecutors, Lieber
allegedly told investigators from the DOD’s Defense
Criminal Investigative Service in 2018 he didn’t know how
he was characterized by China, but denied ever being
explicitly asked to participate in the Thousand Talents
programme. The investigators were acting on
University under pressure to
information from the FBI when they questioned Lieber,
rehire scientist acquitted of
hiding China links the filing said. It also said that the nanotechnology
researcher told Harvard administrators that he was not,
and had never been, a participant in the programme during a grant-compliance review
for the NIH, which in 2018 began scrutinizing potential ties that Harvard and Lieber
had to the WUT and Thousand Talents.

But an affidavit by FBI special agent Robert Plumb states that the WUT asked Lieber in
2012 to participate in the programme, that he agreed to a three-year contract and that
he was paid over several years in accordance with it.
Legal experts emphasized to Nature that the burden will be on prosecutors to convince
a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that, among other things, Lieber knowingly and
willfully made false statements. “It appears that the government has e-mails that will be
helpful in doing that, but we’ll only see at trial how strong the evidence is,” says
Margaret Lewis, a criminal-law specialist at Seton Hall University who studies the China
Initiative. “The government does have a burden to do more than just prove that forms
were filled out incorrectly. They also have this element of, what was the context, what
was happening in professor Lieber’s mind?"

What might happen at trial?

When it comes to the false-statement charges, some expect Lieber’s legal team to
argue that he misunderstood what he was being asked during those investigations in
2018. “I would expect that the defense to the charges would be — I’m just guessing — he
misunderstood the question, felt that he was giving a truthful answer, forgot, [or] got
confused,” says Seth DuCharme, a partner at law firm Bracewell in New York City who is
a former senior DOJ official.

Whether Lieber actually received all the benefits promised by the alleged Thousand
Talents contract could also affect his sentencing. According to Plumb’s affidavit, the
contract Lieber allegedly agreed to allowed a salary of up to $50,000 a month
calculated on the basis of the amount of time he spent working at the WUT. Peter
Toren, an intellectual-property lawyer in Washington DC, says if Lieber is convicted,
the amount of money he ultimately received would probably significantly affect his
sentence — the larger the amount, the harsher the sentence.

Why does the outcome of this case matter?

The outcome matters to Lieber personally of course, but it could also have a ripple
effect. Many in the research community have been concerned that the US
government’s efforts to crack down on foreign interference are harming scientific
collaborations and leading to an exodus of researchers of Chinese heritage from the
United States. They also worry that there is racial profiling — an accusation that the US
government has repeatedly denied. A number of scientists have been calling for an end
to the China Initiative, including about 40 of Lieber’s colleagues, who wrote a letter in
March asking the government to drop the charges against him.

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The Chinese government has also criticized the initiative
as politically motivated.

Derek Adams, a partner at Potomac Law Group and

former DOJ trial attorney, says that if a researcher as high
profile as Lieber is not acquitted, other researchers
Scientists in China say US accused of hiding ties to China might be less willing to
government crackdown is
harming collaborations fight charges and more willing to take plea deals. “The
defendants will see probably that there’s more risk
involved,” he says.

On the flip side, if the case is decided in Lieber’s favour, Adams thinks a second loss in
court since the launch of the China Initiative could lead the DOJ to rethink its
prosecution strategy, decrease the resources and effort it’s spending on these cases, or
give defendants more leverage in plea-deal negotiations. The US Congress might also
apply pressure to end the China Initiative. On 29 July, representative Ted Lieu and
about 90 other members of Congress sent a letter to US Attorney General Merrick
Garland requesting a DOJ investigation into historic targeting of individuals of Asian
descent for alleged espionage, and information on whether people are being targeted
on the basis of race, ethnicity or national origin under the China Initiative. Lieber is one
of the exceptions, but an analysis by MIT Technology Review of charges believed to be
associated with the China Initiative found that more than 90% of defendants have been
of Chinese heritage.

Some even think that if the US government loses its case against Lieber, the outcome
could help convince more researchers to stay in the country. “If it leads to another
acquittal, it will certainly give a lot of hope to people who are now sitting on the fence
and are undecided [about] whether they should leave the United States or not,” says
Alice Huang, a biologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and
board member of the 80-20 Educational Foundation, an advocacy group for Asian
American equality. “It would encourage more of the scientists to stay and fight.”

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03752-4

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