SDNY / UN GATE,
March 16 – The day after the
SDNY prosecution of Zhongsan
Lui for illegal recruitment in
the US was covered
by Inner City Press (and the
involved UN refused to answer
Press questions on it), from
EDNY this:
"Two complaints
were unsealed and one amended
complaint was authorized today
in federal court in Brooklyn
charging five defendants with
various crimes related to
efforts by the secret police
of the People’s Republic of
China (PRC) to stalk, harass,
and spy on Chinese nationals
residing in Queens, New York
and elsewhere in the United
States... Fan “Frank”
Liu and Matthew Ziburis were
arrested yesterday, while
Shujun Wang was arrested this
morning. All three arrests
occurred in the Eastern
District of New York. The
defendants’ initial
appearances are scheduled this
afternoon in Brooklyn before
United States Magistrate Judge
James R. Cho." (Inner City
Press will cover that)
Just after
3 pm, Breon Peace, United
States Attorney for the
Eastern District of New York,
held a telephone press
conference, to his credit, and
took four questions. Inner
City Press asked about the
role of the UN and China's
Mission to the UN, noting the
NYPD Angwang case and the
recent persona non grata
removal of a UN staff member
for working for Russia. The
answer, for now, was that
China's intimidation is
growing wider.
Inner City Press
live tweeted the presentments
in which all three were
bailed, thread here:
OK - now in EDNY,
presentment of defendant Fan
“Frank” Liu, charged with
interstate harassment,
operating as agent of China
without FARA notification, etc
Liu's lawyer: I think we have
arrived at something close to
an agreement on bond. [Lui
will be released -- note that
NYPD Angwang wasn't, at first
- now he's out]. Judge James
R. Cho: What's the proposed
bail package?
AUSA: We are
close.
AUSA: One
million bond with attachment
of Mr. Liu's two properties,
one in Jericho NY and the
other in Florida. Electronic
monitoring with a curfew.
Cannot to go PRC consultate
[UN Mission of China on 35th
Street]. US wants $100,000
case. Lui says 25K
AUSA: We're
stuck at $50,000. The
defendant has $3 million in
funds related to this case
have been transferred into his
and his wife's account. He was
an agent of the PRC. He's had
extensive contacts with the
PRC consulate.
Lui's
lawyer: The US is only
alleging payments of $1500 to
a private investigator for
public record. There's the
destruction of a work of art
by a "not particularly famous
Chinese artist." Frank Liu has
Edgar Frankbonner from the
firm of Goldberger &
Dubin.
Frankbonner:
Until recently he had a second
home in Queens. $50,000 bail
is an "extortionary sum." He's
not a flight risk. This is not
a crime of violence. I
understand the insinuations.
It's unsavory, sure. But he he
turns in his passport, no
flight risk.
Frankbonner:
$25,000 would not put them in
the poor house. $50,000 would.
It's unusual to wait until the
bond is perfected to release
the person. [Note: It is not
unusual, at least in SDNY]
AUSA: Mr. Lui
traveled to China three years
ago. All he needs to go is go
to the PRC Consulate in
Manhattan. And he's gone. This
entire case is about his
connections to the PRC and
what he is doing for them here
in the US
James James
R. Cho: I'm setting bail at
$30,000 and he does not have
to wait to perfect the
bond. AUSA: Until
properties attached, home
imprisonment?
Defense: We
object.Defense: It only takes
a few days to attach the
properties. He's a working
person and needs to go about
his life. James James R. Cho:
Home incarceration until
Friday. Is the suretor here?
Have her stand by the podium.
Lui's wife comes forward.
Lui's wife
states their address, which
Inner City Press is not
publishing here. Judge: I am
approving bail today.
Thread(s) will continue - and
story later.
OK - Now US
pushing for electronic
monitoring of Shujun Wang -
Federal Defenders opposing it
Inner City Press
@innercitypress · 43m Judge: I
am prepared to sign the bond.
Mr. Wang, you will be
released. We are adjourned.
But wait -
there's more! Now at 6:38 pm
the presentment of Lui's and
Wang's co-defendant Matthew
Ziburis with taxpayer funded
lawyer Tony Ricco. Judge: You
are charged with violating
FARA and with harassing
inter-state and ID theft.
US is agreeing to
pre-trial release on $500,000
bond signed by girlfriend and
mother who owns a house in
Ohio, and $15,000 cash, all to
be done by Friday until which
time, electronic
monitoring. Counsel:
Fine.
Ziburis’
girlfriend is a teacher, she
says. They call his
mother in Ohio, who says "What
is this?" "Judge Cho from New
York. How are you?" "Upset! I
don't understand this!"
Judge Cho reads
an address, and asks Ziburis’
mother, Do you live there?
"No, that's his father."
Judge: And you don't live
there? A: I don't. [She gives
another address that we will
not publish.] She's on Social
Security.
Ziburis’
mother: What did he do? Judge:
I don't think I need to
summarize that right now. Good
bye. [Dial tone.] Now AUSA
contests Ziburis' eligibility
for appointed counsel, says
"may revisit it."
We'll have
more on this - and on the
Zhongsan Lui trial.
The UN - more
than a dozen spokespeople and
officials - got this question
from Inner City Press, before
the EDNY press conference:
"Press request on deadline for
comment and action if any of
SG Guterres on March 16
unsealing in federal court in
Brooklyn of indictments /
complaints charging five
defendants with various crimes
related to efforts by the
secret police of the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) to
stalk, harass, and spy on
Chinese nationals residing in
Queens, New York and elsewhere
in the United States. All of
the defendants allegedly
perpetrated transnational
repression schemes to target
U.S. residents whose political
views and actions are
disfavored by the PRC
government, such as advocating
for democracy in the PRC."
What is the role of China's
Mission to the UN - and of the
UN itself? On deadline."
No answer at all.
Hours before the Beijing
Winter Olympics a/k/a the
Genocide Games kicked off,
United Nations Secretary
General Antonio Guterres was
there, issuing a canned video
and equally canned read-out
with the IOC's Thomas Bach. It
was shameful.
On February
18, before the end of the
Games, a book is published: "Genocide Games of Guterres, In A Stormy Time: Silent on Uighurs Mass Incarcerated in Xinjiang, UN Is Complicit & Bans Press Which Covers DDC & Jho Low," here.
Just after
the Genocide Games - not
during - Nils van der Poel of
Sweden, who won two
speedskating gold medals said:
"The Olympics is a lot, it’s a
fantastic sporting event where
you unite the world and
nations meet. But so did
Hitler before invading Poland
(Berlin hosted the 1936 Summer
Games), and so did Russia
before invading Ukraine [the
first time?]. "I
think it is extremely
irresponsible to give it to a
country that violates human
rights as blatantly as the
Chinese regime is doing." He
added, tellingly, "I
really think
it’s terrible,
but I think I
shouldn’t say
too much about
it, because we
still have a
squad in
China." What a
travesty.
This comes
after even Foreign Affairs has
said, albeit behind a paywall,
"as if he’d somehow wandered into the wrong party, there was UN Secretary-General General António Guterres, who has distinguished himself with his silence on China’s human rights abuses.”
So why do people put up with Guterres? Inner
City Press on January 24 in
writing asked Guterres'
spokespeople Stephane Dujarric
and Melissa Fleming: "On SG
Guterres' attendance at the
upcoming Beijing Winter
Genocide Olympics a/k/a
Genocide Games, please
immediately confirm knowledge
by the UN of, and SG Guterres'
response to, this
letter." Nothing - no
answer. Feb 19 song here
For China,
Antonerio Guterres ensures too
that no journalist from Taiwan
or any Taiwan based media can
even come into the UN, as
Inner City Press can't. And
where is the US Mission and
State Department? They have
been asked, by a major law
firm pro bono. Watch this
site.
On February 2 US
Senator Jeff Merkley
(D-Oregon) said, "It’s
shameful for António Guterres
to appear at the games. The
U.N. has basically failed
human rights."
He may not
know the half of it.
Dujarric
bragged that Guterres
would go "to Korea and
then taking a plane to Beijing
and then flying out
commercially out of Beijing."
So the
plane to Beijing is not
commercial. A CCP private jet
like UN briber Ng Lap Seng, or
Patrick Ho? During the
Genocide Games, Guterres will
be "in the [closed] loop" and
will, Dujarric said, meet with
Xi Jin Ping.
The
UN did not exist in 1936 but
it seems clear that Guterres
would have attended the Nazi
Olympics, too. At least if
they, like China through the
China Energy Fund Committee,
flashed cash at one of
Guterres' undisclosed funders,
the Gulbenkian Foundation, and
ensured him five more years of
impunity in a Manhattan
mansion not far from Jeffrey
Epstein's.
Not asked
about the state media allowed
into the UN and Guterres' rare
press conferences by his head
of media accreditation Melissa
Fleming, Guterres had received
a letter to reconsider his
attendance. Had Guterres
answered, or even read it?
Inner City Press would ask, if
only in writing while it
remains banned from entering
the UN, and blocked on Twitter
by China's Ambassador Zhang.
The letter concludes,
"as the highest representative
of the UN, your attendance
will be seen as credence to
China’s blatant disregard for
international human rights
laws and serve to embolden the
actions of the Chinese
authorities. We therefore urge
you to reconsider your
decision to attend the 2022
Beijing Winter Games." Fat
chance. Fat Tony.
Sidebar on Tony's
cronies: Qatar state media
asked about why the UN
escalators weren't working, to
get him up the three flights
of stairs to Al Jazeera's four
large offices (there was, of
course, a bank of
elevators).
A
retired French correspondent
who had held a fundraiser with
now-convicted global pedophile
Ghislaine
Maxwell asked a similar
question in French. Dujarric,
also French and a genocide
denier for the UN's Secretary
General who less gleefully
covered up the Rwanda
genocide, answered in French,
and smiled.
"No more questions?"
Dujarric asked rhetorically,
glancing down at the empty
mirror of those the UN's media
accreditation chief Melissa
Fleming allow to ask
questions remotely, as nearly
every institution in this time
of COVID-19, the link of which
to Wuhan she spent public
money to
censor. Then
I leave you in the hands of
Paulina Kubiak, Dujarric said.
The second
spokeswoman in only four
months for UN General Assembly
President Abdul Shahid of the
Maldives, also purchased by
China, also going to the
Genocide Games.
She spoke,
without irony, about Shahid
calling for an Olympic truce.
This while the host was
involved in the mass killing
and incarceration of Uighurs
in Xinjiang, or East Turkestan
as many including Kurt
Wheelock referred to it.
For her, there
were no questions at all, not
even about the
escalator. It was
over. The UN's legitimacy had
died long before. But this was
a new low, and a new season.
And a next text, follow-up to
Belt
and Roadkill: Genocide
Games of Guterres.
Will
Guterres be taking his Deputy
Amina
J. Mohammed, supportive
of the killing and targeted
detentions perpetrated by
Buhari of Nigeria? See,
Identity Thieves - and,
forthcoming, Genocide Games of
Guterres. For now, Belt
and Roadkill.
***
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