Federal prosecutors have shockingly dropped their case against an NYPD cop accused of being a spy for the Chinese government.
Prosecutors in the Brooklyn US Attorney Breon’s office signed off Friday on vague legal papers, asking federal Judge Eric R. Komitee to dismiss an indictment against Baimadajie Angwang. The feds said they reached the decision after examining “additional information bearing on the charges,” but they offered no specifics.
Angwang, an NYPD cop and US Army reservist who had secret-level security clearance from the Department of Defense, was charged in 2020 with spying on fellow Tibetan immigrants in the Big Apple.
At the time, FBI New York Assistant Director-in-Charge William Sweeney Jr. called Angwang, who worked as a community affairs officer in the 111th Precinct in Queens, “the definition of an insider threat.”
He said the Tibetan-American allegedly “operated on behalf of a foreign government; lied to gain his clearance, and used his position as an NYPD police officer to aid the Chinese government’s subversive and illegal attempts to recruit intelligence sources.”
Angwang could’ve gotten up to 55 years in prison if he was convicted.
Prosecutors alleged Angwang, 36, began spying on behalf of the People’s Republic of China in May 2018 with an unidentified handler stationed in the Chinese consulate in Manhattan
Angwang’s trial was scheduled to begin July 17 after he was an granted an extension. He was initially set to go before jurors last September.
He faced up to 55 years behind bars if convicted.
Angwang’s lawyer John F. Carman accused the feds of hiding behind the Classified Information Procedures Act to avoid having to explain why the case is being dropped.
“The truth is that they are hiding behind CIPA in an effort to give the impression that this was a legitimate prosecution, which it was not,” he told The Post. “Mr. Angwang is a great American who served his country in combat in Afghanistan and our government repaid him by treating him like he was the leader of the Taliban.”
