Federal Prosecutors Drop Case Against NYPD Officer Accused of Spying for China

NYPD officer Baimadajie Angwang.

Federal prosecutors in New York dropped their case against an NYPD officer indicted for allegedly spying on behalf of China’s communist regime.

Baimadajie Angwang was charged in 2020 with acting as an illegal agent of China’s communist regime.

Angwang was an officer with the NYPD’s 111th Precinct in Queens and a U.S. Army reservist. Born in Tibet, he was a naturalized U.S. citizen who previously served in the U.S. Marine Corps and joined the Army Reserve

He was accused of reporting on the activities of Tibetan residents in New York City at the request of the Chinese Consulate there. The efforts allegedly began in 2014.

The motion to dismiss filed by prosecutors on Jan. 13 doesn’t give a clear reason for the decision to drop the charges.

“As a result of our continued investigation, the government obtained additional information bearing on the charges,” the filing read. “Having assessed the evidence as a whole in light of that information ... the government hereby moves, in the interests of justice, to dismiss the indictment without prejudice.”

The move to drop the case follows several similar incidents in 2022 in which federal officers arrested and accused people of spying for China only to suddenly drop the cases without providing clear reasons.

The reports Angwang had been accused of passing to China included potential intelligence sources within New York’s Tibetan community and involved working in close consultation with the China Association for Preservation and Development of Tibetan Culture, a division of the regime’s propaganda-oriented United Front Work Department, which is also involved in neutralizing potential opponents of the regime.

“The defendant allegedly violated the trust of his community and the New York City Police Department on behalf of a foreign power, the People’s Republic of China. This type of conduct simply cannot be tolerated,” the FBI counterintelligence division’s assistant director, Alan E. Kohler Jr., said at the time.

“This case serves as yet another reminder that China represents the biggest counterintelligence threat to the United States and that the FBI and our partners will be aggressive in investigating and stopping such activities within our nation.”

It’s unclear why the charges against Angwan were dropped. Prosecutors previously asserted they had audio recordings of Angwang’s meetings with his handlers from China, and that he suggested to them that he use his position as a police officer to build credentials for himself in China.

“Let them know, you have recruited one in the police department,” Angwang allegedly said in one such conversation.

The Trump-era “China Initiative,” a counter-espionage program was intended to root out and counter malign influence from the Chinese Communist Party, which rules China as a single-party state.

The program and its alleged failures led critics to accuse officials of racism and racial profiling. The Department of Justice in turn carried out an internal investigation, which found no evidence of racial bias.

The department terminated the program anyway, saying that it wanted to avoid the “harmful perception” of bias.