Trial of Anming Hu

| p = Hú Ānmíng | title = Anming Hu }} On February 27, 2020, Chinese-Canadian academic Anming Hu was arrested and charged with fraud, as well as accusations of not disclosing his association with a Chinese university. September 9, 2021, the trial was acquitted, and Hu was cleared of all charges. On February 1, 2022, he returned to his lab at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK).

Anming Hu (born 1968) is a Chinese-Canadian academic who worked as an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering at the UTK from 2013 up until February 2020, when UTK suspended him.

Hu was charged under a 2011 law which the Trump administration used to target professors and researchers working at American universities, as part of the "China Initiative" on combating economic espionage. Hu was the first target of the China Initiative to stand trial. He was represented by Knoxville attorney Phil Lomonaco. Hu was charged with three counts of wire fraud and three counts of making false statements, after 21 months of FBI surveillance failed to turn up evidence of espionage. The first trial of Hu's case ended in a mistrial due to a hung jury on June 16, 2021. The trial generated controversy due to the FBI's misconduct, which included knowingly building a case based on false evidence, obtaining Hu's university documents without warrant, spying on Hu and his family, and attempting to coerce Hu to spy on China for the United States. Following the mistrial, Hu was again prosecuted by the United States Department of Justice, which resulted in a second defeat for the Justice Department when Hu was acquitted. Provided by Wikipedia