Court overturns conviction of chemist Feng “Franklin” Tao

The 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver voted 2–1 on July 11 to throw out the conviction of former University of Kansas (KU) chemist Feng “Franklin” Tao. A jury had found Tao guilty of one count of making false statements to KU, the US National Science Foundation, and the US Department of Energy because he did not disclose connections to Fuzhou University in China.

Judge Nancy Louse Moritz states in the ruling that there was insufficient evidence that Tao’s disclosure statement to KU was relevant to the two government agencies. “We reverse Tao’s conviction and remand for the district court to enter a judgment of acquittal,” she writes.

Tao was tried in March 2022 under the China Initiative, a controversial program that the US Department of Justice created to crack down on economic espionage. The Biden administration ended the program in February 2022 because it was targeting people of Asian descent.

In April 2022, the Kansas City, Kansas, jury found Tao guilty of one count of making false statements and three counts of wire fraud. US District Judge Julie A. Robinson, who oversaw Tao’s trial, acquitted him of the wire fraud counts in September of that year. In January 2023, she sentenced him to time served and supervised release for two years.

“More than five years after he was wrongfully arrested, the 10th Circuit has publicly declared what Franklin Tao has known all along: he is Not Guilty of the allegations made against him,” Peter Zeidenberg, Tao’s defense attorney, says in an emailed statement. “Dr. Tao is grateful that this long nightmare is finally over.”

According to the court ruling, a visiting scholar at KU threatened to report Tao as a spy to the US government if he did not pay her $300,000. He ignored her request, and she followed through with her threat, triggering an FBI investigation. KU put Tao on administrative leave without pay when he was arrested in August 2019 and fired him when he was convicted in 2022.

Now that Tao has been exonerated, Zeidenberg says he hopes the scientist will be reinstated at KU.