Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have indicted the co-director of a Maryland-based think tank on a host of charges stemming from what they claim was his unrecorded plea for Chinese causes while trying to sell weapons on behalf of a Chinese company to a number of foreigners. countries.
Gal Luft, a dual Israeli-American citizen and co-director of the Institute for Global Security Analysis, was also charged with violating Iranian sanctions and making false statements to federal agents, according to the indictment. indictment from November 2022 which was made public on Monday.
Luft, 57, is currently a fugitive, prosecutors said. He was arrested on those charges in Cyprus in February but fled after posting bail.
In recent months, Luft has made headlines by alleging in so far unsubstantiated public statements promoted by House Republicans that the Biden family received payments from Chinese nationals linked to Chinese intelligence services and that Hunter Biden had a mole in the FBI.
“He’s very credible,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told Newsmax last week.
Luft did not respond to a request for comment.
Prosecutors allege he was involved in “multiple international criminal schemes” spanning several years.
“He overturned US foreign agent registration laws to seek to promote Chinese policies by acting through a former senior US government official; he acted as a broker in transactions dangerous weapons and Iranian oil; and he told multiple lies about his crimes to law enforcement,” said Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
The indictment alleges he entered into a $350,000-a-year deal with the head of a nongovernmental organization affiliated with a Chinese energy company in 2015 to promote Chinese causes.
One of the things Luft was then instructed to do was work to ‘recruit’ and ‘educate’ a ‘former senior US government official’ to make public statements that were in China’s interest for a fee. , according to the indictment. The official became “an adviser to then-president-elect Donald Trump in 2016, according to the indictment.
The indictment does not name the former official, identifying him only as “Individual-1”, but does refer to pro-China articles written by James Woolsey.
Woolsey served as CIA director from 1993 to 1995 under then-President Bill Clinton, and he joined the Trump campaign as a senior adviser ahead of the 2016 election and served on the Trump transition team. Trump, according to public reports.
A rep for Woolsey had no immediate comment.
Luft also allegedly “conspired with others and attempted to negotiate illicit arms transactions with, among others, certain Chinese individuals and entities” and foreign countries, including Libya, the United Arab Emirates and Kenya, the authorities said. prosecutors.
The transactions took place between 2014 and 2017, with ammunition including bombs, rockets and grenade launchers, according to the indictment.
Luft also reportedly worked on a plan for China to buy Iranian oil, despite US sanctions on Iran. The indictment says he asked a co-conspirator to identify the oil as coming from Brazil, not Iran.
Luft is also accused of making false statements to federal agents when they questioned him about alleged arms trafficking and sanctions evasion during an interview in Brussels in March 2019.
He apparently gave a different account of the substance of that meeting to the House Oversight Committee.
“Gal Luft, a highly credible witness to Biden family corruption, provided incriminating evidence to six FBI and DOJ officials during a meeting in Brussels in March 2019. We have no reason to believe that the FBI and DOJ acted on this information,” Comer tweeted Friday.
“Americans deserve answers,” he wrote.
In a Newsmax interview the same day that Comer linked to in the tweet, he acknowledged that Luft was the informant he said went missing in May. “People on MSNBC who laughed at me when I said we had a missing informant, they should be feeling like fools right now. It’s their worst nightmare,” he said.
In a statement Tuesday, Comer noted that the Chinese energy company Luft worked for had financial ties to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
NBC News previously reported that Hudson West III, a venture backed by the company and its chairman, paid about $4.8 million to a Hunter Biden-controlled company called Owasco PC. The payments were made in 2017 and 2018, according to a report by Senate Republicans. — after Biden’s father left the White House.
“Gal Luft was interviewed by the FBI and allegedly provided information on the Bidens and [the Chinese energy company]. The House Oversight Committee intends to obtain these records from the FBI,” Comer said in his statement Tuesday.
He also ignored the relevance of the criminal allegations.
“Many people connected to the Biden family’s business dealings have been charged with crimes or are in jail,” he alleged.
While the indictment wasn’t released until Monday, Luft, who prosecutors say hasn’t returned to the US since 2017, had been complaining about the charges for months, suggesting he was a victim. of a conspiracy.
“I was arrested in Cyprus on a politically motivated extradition request by the United States. The United States, claiming that I am an arms dealer. It would be funny if it were not tragic. I don’t ‘ve never been an arms dealer. DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe, Jim and Hunter Biden,” he said. tweeted in February.
Luft said in a recording published by the New York Post last week that he had met with the FBI and “volunteered to inform the United States government of a possible security breach and compromising information about a man in vying to be the next president”, claiming that he was “now hunted by the same people I informed”.
He also said he skipped bail because “I didn’t think I would get a fair trial in a New York court.”
This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com