US-Israeli analyst charged in New York with being covert China agent, arms dealing
Fugitive think tank head Gal Luft claims Biden administration trying to silence him over information he provided to FBI showing US president’s family dealt with Chinese company
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US authorities on Monday announced covert lobbying and arms dealing charges against a US-Israeli analyst who has accused US President Joe Biden’s son of corruption.
Federal prosecutors in New York charged Gal Luft, the head of a think tank outside the US capital, of engaging “in multiple, serious, criminal schemes,” according to a Justice Department statement.
In announcing the unsealing of an eight-count indictment, prosecutors said Luft is accused of “offenses related to willfully failing to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), arms trafficking, Iranian sanctions violations, and making false statements to federal agents.”
Luft, co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, has leveled allegations of corruption against Biden’s family, and Republican politicians called the charges against him an attempt to intimidate a key witness.
According to prosecutors, Luft “subverted foreign agent registration laws in the United States to seek to promote Chinese policies by acting through a former high-ranking US Government official.”
The statement did not name the former US official, saying only that at the time he was working as an adviser to then-US president Donald Trump.
Luft, it said, “agreed to covertly recruit and pay” the official “on behalf of principals based in China.”
Furthermore, Luft “acted as a broker in deals for dangerous weapons and Iranian oil; and he told multiple lies about his crimes to law enforcement,” the statement said.
Prosecutors said Luft worked to broker a deal for Chinese companies to sell weapons to Libya, including anti-tank launchers, grenade launchers, and mortar rounds on a commission basis. In communications, Luft and his associates used coded language, referring to weapons as “toys,” they said.
Other alleged brokering activities were for potential deals to the United Arab Emirates that included aerial bombs and rockets. Another alleged deal was for Chinese weapons to be sold to Kenya, including strike drones.
The statement said Luft also discussed brokering a deal for a weapons sale to Qatar, allegedly telling an associate that Israel was “not a good fit” as the middleman for the deal because it had the “[s]ame problem the [] Q [i.e., Qataris] have w uncle [i.e., the United States]. Need a third party. . . . I will activate.”
Luft, 57, was arrested in February in Cyprus on US charges, but fled after he was released on bail awaiting extradition proceedings, prosecutors said. Luft remains at large and the US Justice Department is asking for information on his whereabouts.
A Twitter account under Luft’s name has claimed he was arrested in Cyprus “on a politically motivated extradition request by the US.”
“I’ve never been an arms dealer,” one post asserted shortly after he vanished in Cyprus.
In a video published by the New York Post last week, Luft said that in 2019 he provided evidence to US Justice Department and FBI officials on what he said were Biden family financial transactions with the Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC. The information, he claimed, was then covered up.
— Pardon Gal Luft Political Prisoner (@GalLuft) July 9, 2023
Republican Senator Ron Johnson accused the government of a coverup.
“He’s got a wealth of information. But they never followed up on that meeting,” Johnson said recently on Fox News. “Instead, they arrested him in Cyprus to silence him.”
Luft also got support earlier this week from Frank Gaffney, executive chairman of the Center for Security Policy think tank, who tweeted, “These days Dr. Luft might be better known as ‘David’ for he now faces alone the Goliath of a US government determined to crush him to protect President Joe Biden.”
With Biden ramping up his bid for a second term as president in the 2024 election, Republicans in Congress accused the Biden family in May of pocketing more than $10 million from dealings with Chinese and Romanian firms — though they offered little evidence.
These accusations are part of a long-running campaign targeting Hunter Biden, the president’s son and only surviving child of his first marriage.
Republicans accuse Hunter Biden of capitalizing on his father’s influence when he served as vice president under Barack Obama in order to engage in shady dealings in several countries.
The Institute for the Analysis of Global Security reportedly did not respond to media requests for comment.
The Times of Israel Community.