Gal Luft on the Lam

[Laan Yaa Mo]

Gai Luft was arrested in Cyprus but escaped while on bail. Who is he, and what has he done? Is he a Chinese spy, an Israeli spy or a U.S. spy, or all of them. Did he arrange a meeting between a Hong Kong Chinese and a U.S. politician during the Trump administration to push a pro-China agenda? What has he done to raise Biden's ire? It's complicated.

'A director of a Washington think tank has gone on the run after he was charged with acting as an unregistered agent of China by seeking to recruit one of Donald Trump’s advisers to promote policies favourable to Beijing, prosecutors in New York have said.

Gal Luft, 57, an American and Israeli citizen and the co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, was arrested in Cyprus in February on charges set out in a sealed indictment.

Luft, who fled after being released on bail during extradition proceedings, has denied the charges and accused prosecutors of seeking to “bury” him after he offered damaging information about the Biden family, in a video he released last week to the New York Post.

Prosecutors have now unsealed the indictment, which also alleges that Luft conducted illicit arms trading and brokered oil deals that evaded sanctions on Iran, instructing an associate to refer to it as “Brazilian” oil.

The announcement of the charges, and an appeal for information on his whereabouts, comes days after Luft cast himself as a whistleblower. He said he had served for four years as an adviser to a Chinese energy company and sought to come forward in 2019 with information about its dealings with the Biden family.

Luft said he had met representatives from the Department of Justice (DoJ) while Joe Biden was preparing to announce his campaign for the presidency “out of deep concern that if the Bidens were to come to power the country would be facing the same traumatic Russia collusion scandal [seen during the Trump presidency], only this time [with] China”.

He alleged that his claims were later corroborated by materials found on the laptop of Biden’s son, Hunter. He accused the DoJ of covering up his allegations and filing an indictment against him in November last year, just as Republicans were poised to win control of the House of Representatives and launch investigations into Hunter Biden.

In a statement on Twitter at the time of his arrest in Cyprus, he said he had “never been an arms dealer” and claimed that the DoJ “is trying to bury me” to protect the Biden family. In his video statement to the New York Post last week, he cast the indictment as an attempt to stop him testifying before Congress and suggested that prosecutors should make it public.

“Make my day,” he said. “Put it on your website so that every American can see the nature of the allegations against me.”

The indictment was placed on the DoJ’s website on Monday, and includes eight charges, including making false statements to federal agents. Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Luft had “engaged in multiple, serious criminal schemes” and that his office would “hold accountable those who surreptitiously attempt to perpetrate malign foreign influence campaigns here in the United States”.

The indictment alleges that Luft agreed to work on behalf of a former official of the Hong Kong government, who was the head of a non-governmental group called CEFC, based in Hong Kong and in Virginia, that was funded by a Chinese oil company. Prosecutors say this group paid Luft’s think tank $350,000 a year and Luft agreed, among other things, “to recruit and ‘educate’ ” a senior figure in Washington, who would then make public statements “in the interest of China”.

The senior figure is unnamed but the details match those of James Woolsey, a former director of the CIA. Luft is said to have orchestrated an “interview” or dialogue between the Hong Kong official and Woolsey in late 2016, when he was an adviser to Trump as a candidate and when he became the president-elect. They say Luft drafted the responses from the Trump adviser, including a statement about a “grand bargain” between the US and China, which then appeared in a series of articles in Chinese and Hong Kong newspapers.

Prosecutors say that Luft was acting, in these dealings, as an unregistered agent of China. They say he and the former Chinese official later discussed the Trump adviser’s potential position in Trump’s administration, with his contact saying that “this side would like to see him assuming something with a ‘China’ profile”, preferably “S of D”, meaning secretary of defence.

In January 2017 Woolsey announced that he was stepping aside from Trump’s transition team, saying he had only ever been an “informal adviser and I’m really not anymore”.

Luft, in his video message to the New York Post, said that CEFC was a registered charity and that it was a donor to the Clinton Foundation and to Columbia University, and that Woolsey had been an adviser to his think tank since 2002. “The notion that Gal Luft spoon fed a CIA director with policy proposals on China, treating him like a useful idiot is not only an insult to the intelligence community, it’s an insult to the intelligence of every American,” he said.

He said he had fled because he did not believe he would receive a fair trial in New York, where he believed that he would be barred from mentioning to the jury his efforts to serve as a whistleblower.

“I, who volunteered to inform the US government about a potential security breach, am now being hunted by the very same people who I informed and may have to live on the run for the rest of my life,” he said.'

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/thin ... -63tj33bl3

[Whistler]

If there was a plot to silence him, one would have thought a 9mm would be more effective than letting this guy testify in an open court.

[deankham]

Interesting article Laan, thanks for sharing.

[ChicagoExpat]

If there was a plot to silence him, one would have thought a 9mm would be more effective than letting this guy testify in an open court.

Agree. These guys who claimed they'd drain the swamp just made it wider and deeper.

[FrazeeDK]

The Foreign AGents Registataion Act is enforced unevenly. Some that violate it get chased down and tried, others get a slap on the wrist and still others merely have to do a late registration. LTG Michael Flynn, Trump's National Security Advisor for the shortest time in hisotry was one that just had to register late..

As for this guy Luft, sounds like he got the FARA charge as well as others.. A whistleblower? If he told DOJ back in 2020 or earlier Biden was dirty then how about some documentation???

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_A ... ration_Act