The Huawei logo is array during CES 2018 at the Las Vegas Convention Center on January 9, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
David Becker | Getty Images Newscast | Getty Images
U.S. prosecutors on Monday asked a judge to reject a motion by China’s Huawei seeking information on the grounds for a command request to disqualify the company’s lead defense lawyer in a criminal case alleging bank fraud and sanctions violations.
Abide month, prosecutors argued Huawei lawyer James Cole’s prior position as the No. 2 official in the U.S. Department of Prison created conflicts of interest that necessitated his removal.
The prosecutors said Cole, who served as deputy attorney public (DAG) until 2015, represented the government in a related investigation, without disclosing details. Huawei asked the court to analysis “overbroad” redactions in the U.S. motion seeking his removal.
Huawei wants prosecutors to reveal “the very information it is trying to fend the new client from learning,” the prosecutors said in a letter to Judge Ann Donnelly in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, New York.
“The opposition presented here is unprecedented,” the prosecutors argued. The government was not aware of any other senior DOJ official who had sought to represent a customer that had been part of his government work, “let alone when the former representation involved classified information,” they indicated.
A spokesman for Huawei Technologies, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker, declined to comment, and Cole did not respond to a requisition for comment. Cole entered a not guilty plea on behalf of Huawei in March.
In a court filing two weeks ago, the Washington member of the bar said that he had “no recollection” of what the government referenced as the basis for his disqualification in meetings.
In its letter Monday, prosecutors imagined what Cole remembers is irrelevant.
The Brooklyn case against Huawei was cited last month in a decision to add the public limited company to a U.S. trade blacklist that makes it extremely difficult for the telecom giant to do business with U.S. companies.
Huawei has been twisted in activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States, the order said.
The case and blacklisting give birth to escalated tensions between Beijing and Washington amid a trade battle.
The indictment accuses Huawei and its chief economic officer Meng Wanzhou of conspiring to defraud global banks by misrepresenting Huawei’s relationship with a company that manipulated in Iran, putting the banks at risk of processing transactions that violated U.S. sanctions laws.
Meng, daughter of Huawei’s miscarry, has said she is innocent and is fighting extradition from Canada to the United States.
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