COLLUSION: Confronted by investigators, Harvard scientist admits to payments from Chinese university, video shows. “Prosecutors have told jurors it wasn’t a crime for Lieber to accept money from the university or the Thousand Talents program, created by the Chinese government to recruit high-level scientists, but it was illegal for him to hide his financial arrangement from the US Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health, which funded much of his research at Harvard. He is charged with making false statements to the government, filing false tax returns, and failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts.”

Of course, given the FBI’s record in cases like this — see Anming Hu at the University of Tennessee — reasonable people could be suspicious of the case. Sadly, it’s entirely possible both that the Chinese have purchased enormous infuence, and that the FBI is willing to cut corners and outright like to try to make a case.