Scientist seeks damages from FBI

A physics professor at Philadelphia's Temple University charged with sharing technology with China only for the case to collapse has asked a court to reinstate his claims for damages against the US government.

Lawyers for 64-year-old Xi Xiaoxing and his wife say in a brief filed with a Philadelphia-based appeals court that a judge erred last year when he dismissed most claims in their federal lawsuit.

They assert an FBI agent who led the investigation "intentionally, knowingly or recklessly" made false statements and misrepresented evidence so prosecutors could get an indictment.

The bungled case against Xi was brought three years before the Justice Department in 2018 launched the China Initiative - an effort to counter trade secret theft and economic espionage by Beijing.

Many of the cases have targeted professors at US universities suspected of concealing Chinese government ties on applications for federal funding.

Despite some convictions, the effort has endured notable setbacks, with prosecutors forced to dismiss several cases, including one last month when officials could not meet their burden of proof against a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor charged with fraud.

The China Initiative is now under review.

Xi, a naturalized US citizen from China with expertise in thin film superconducting technology, was arrested at his home in May 2015. His wife and daughters were held at gunpoint while the professor was taken into custody to be interrogated.

He was placed on administrative leave, suspended from Temple, and then indicted on charges he shared information about a device called a "pocket heater'' with academic counterparts in China.

But the criminal charges were "false and fabricated,'' the new filing states, and e-mail communications at the center of the case were not about a pocket heater but an entirely different device that described a process Xi and colleagues had invented.

The Justice Department dismissed the case before trial in 2015, and Xi sued in 2017.

In seeking to dismiss the new lawsuit, Justice Department lawyers representing FBI agent Andrew Haugen said probable cause had existed to indict Xi.

A federal judge in Philadelphia dismissed nine of the couple's 10 claims last year, and a 10th claim, related to the surveillance of Xi and his family, remains pending.