DOJ charges Chinese nationals with lying to investigators

The U.S. Department of Justice this week charged five Chinese nationals with lying to federal authorities about whether they observed joint U.S.-Taiwan military exercises. The five men allegedly visited a campground in Grayling, Mich., where they could easily observe the U.S. Army National Guard training with the Taiwanese military. The DOJ accused the men of lying to officials about why they were at the campground—both then, and in later interviews with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the FBI. Officials charged the men on Tuesday with lying to federal agents and destroying evidence, according to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for eastern Michigan. The charges against the men are merely allegations, and each individual is legally presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

What exactly happened? The men—Zhekai Xu, Renxiang Guan, Haoming Zhu, Jingzhe Tao, and Yi Liang—were all undergraduate students at the University of Michigan in August 2023, according to the complaint. That month, they visited the campground in Michigan while the military exercise, called Northern Strike, was taking place, the DOJ said. They told a National Guardsman who approached that they were media members and were taking photos with their cameras, according to the complaint. He firmly told them to leave and they obeyed.

Customs and Border Protection agents later interviewed one of the men, Zhekai Xu, in December as he was leaving the United States for a trip to Shanghai, China, according to the DOJ’s complaint. Agents interviewed him and searched his devices. Xu said he had not interacted with the U.S. military and had merely gone stargazing with some friends, according to the document. But while searching his devices the agents found photographs of military vehicles, according to the complaint.

After his interview, Xu messaged his friends on the Chinese messaging app WeChat about getting their stories straight and removing incriminating information about the trip from their devices, according to the complaint. Federal authorities interviewed the other men when they returned to the United States in March 2024, the DOJ said. Officials found WeChat messages that appeared to show the men discussing getting their stories straight and destroying evidence on the men’s devices, according to the document. Investigators also found discrepancies in each individual’s account of the trip to Grayling—and similarities in their stories that clashed with established evidence and documentation, according to the DOJ’s criminal complaint.

Dig deeper: Read Mary Muncy’s report in The Sift about the U.S. House of Representatives passing a bill to protect American biosecurity from China.