Criminal – False statements

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Where a defendant was convicted of making false statements to the U.S. government, his motion for judgment of acquittal should be denied because the entirety of the evidence was sufficient for a jury to find literal falsity of the statements as charged.

“On December 21,2021, a jury convicted Defendant Charles Lieber on each of six counts for making false statements to the U.S. government in violation of 18 U.S.C. §1001(a)(2) (Counts I and II); filing false tax returns in violation of 26 U.S.C. §7206(1) (Counts III and IV); and failing to report his interest in a foreign bank account in violation of 31 U.S.C. §§5314, 5322(a) (Counts V and VI). … He timely moved for judgment of acquittal pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 29(c) or, alternatively, for a new trial pursuant to Rule 33(a). …

“Defendant was a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. He became its chair in July 2015. The evidence at trial-including Defendant’s video-recorded post-arrest statements, his emails, and the testimony of government agents and Defendant’s former assistant-showed that from 2011 to 2015, Defendant developed a relationship with Wuhan University of Technology (‘WUT’) in China and participated in the Chinese government’s Thousand Talents Program (‘TTP’). …

“In April 2018, agents from the Defense Criminal Investigative Service of the U.S. Department of Defense (‘DOD’) interviewed Defendant about his relationship with WUT and his participation in the TTP. Defendant stated that he was never asked to participate in China’s TTP and that he was not sure how China categorized him, even though Defendant had been asked by representatives of WUT to take part in the TTP and, in July 2012, had signed a three-year contract with WUT memorializing the same. These statements formed the basis of the government’s false statement allegations in Count One of the indictment. …

“Defendant argues that the government did not present reliable evidence of precisely what was said by the DOD agents to evoke the statements at issue. However, acquittal is not justified even if the record did not reveal the exact question to which Defendant replied, because there is no requirement that false statements be precipitated by a question. …

“Finally, Defendant asserts that proving the statement false — that he ‘“wasn’t sure” how China categorized him’ — requires proving China’s state of mind, which the government cannot do. For that same reason, he argues, the statement is literally true because he could not have known China’s state of mind. However, evidence of China’s state of mind was not required. The decisive issue was Defendant’s state of mind, not China’s. To that end, the entirety of the evidence — including Defendant’s emails with WUT professor, Liquiang Mai (‘Professor Mai’) regarding the execution of the TTP contract and his participation in the TTP, as well as Defendant’s post-arrest statement — was sufficient for a jury to find literal falsity of the statements as charged.”

United States v. Lieber (Lawyers Weekly No. 02-269-22) (13 pages) (Zobel, Sr. D.J.) (Criminal Action No. 1:20-CR-10111-RWZ) (Sept. 1, 2022).

Click here to read the full text of the opinion.