Combating Beijing-linked efforts to repress dissidents in the United States is a major priority for the Department of Justice (DOJ), with Attorney General Todd Blanche pledging ongoing investigations and prosecutions as long as the conduct persists.
Speaking to Epoch Times senior editor Jan Jekielek in an “American Thought Leaders” interview scheduled to air at 9 p.m. ET on Oct. 6, Blanche said the DOJ has charged a number of individuals over the past year in cases involving the Chinese regime’s transnational repression, including efforts that involved physical violence against dissidents.
Countering transnational repression “is a big priority of ours—it’s as it should be,” Blanche said.
He warned that transnational suppression “is a very serious issue,” whether Beijing is exploiting social media as a “very powerful tool” or directly paying people to oppress, harass, and physically attack targeted individuals.
“There’s been a lot of ongoing cases and arrests in that space,” Blanche said, adding that such enforcement will continue “to the extent that the conduct continues.”
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Blanche’s remarks come as two recent cases have emerged as examples of the regime’s transnational repression, according to Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division.
“HRIC calls on U.S. law enforcement to investigate the assailants’ identities and possible links to Chinese diplomatic missions,” the organization wrote in its weekly brief on Sept. 29.
Blanche emphasized that not every case of transnational repression is as straightforward as the case of the secretive police station in New York City.
“Some of these cases are very difficult to charge criminally because it isn’t obvious that the person doing it is violating the law as opposed to just exercising the rights that we hold dear in this country,” Blanche said.
In other words, the DOJ must distinguish between protected rights and conduct intended to cause harm, according to Blanche.
“If they’re doing it with the motivation to actually exact harm or exact improper influence or lobby the government without registering, then it gets into the area where it’s something that we need to be investigating and prosecuting,” he said.
The CCP’s so-called united front groups are closely linked to its transnational repression.
Asked whether the Justice Department has the statutory tools to handle cases involving transnational repression, Blanche said existing laws, along with tools such as sanctions available to the Treasury and Commerce Departments, are “more than enough.”
“This is an area that is complicated because not only [do] you have to know the motivation behind it, but it’s also hard to catch because once you catch one, there’s a lot of others,” Blanche said.
