US President Donald Trump thinks he might boost a China trade deal if he stops prosecutors from extraditing a Huawei Technologies Co (華為) executive, but he risks undermining the US justice system and endangering Americans abroad — not to mention angering the US Congress.
Trump said he would intervene in the case against Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟) if he thought it would affect trade talks with Beijing in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday.
The remarks drew a backlash from some US lawmakers and former government officials, and raised alarms in foreign capitals.
Trump said he would base his decision on national security concerns, adding that his ongoing negotiations with China over “what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made” were “a very important thing.”
Meng, accused of conspiring to defraud banks in a manner that put them at risk of breaching US sanctions on Iran, was arrested in Canada on the same day that Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for tense trade talks.
As the chief executive, the president has the power to intervene in the case, former federal prosecutors say, but blocking prosecutors from extraditing Meng could provoke other countries to detain US citizens as leverage in political and economic negotiations, and erode the US’ standing in future extradition requests, they said.
“There’s action the president could take, but it would have at a minimum significant political ramifications,” said Brian Michael, a former federal prosecutor, who is now a partner at law firm King & Spalding LLP.
Trump would mostly likely intervene by ordering the US Department of State not to go forward with the extradition, Michael said. Once extradition happens, it would be much more difficult, unusual and messy for the White House to try to control the US Department of Justice’s prosecution, he said.
Administration officials on Wednesday downplayed Trump’s remarks.
US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross told reporters they were “drawing a lot of conclusions from a potential decision that he has yet to make.”
However, lawmakers expressed concern.
US Senator Chris van Hollen cautioned against linking Meng’s arrest with Trump’s trade talks.
“It is a very dangerous road to go down, if we were to get into a world where people were detained based on a trade and tariff war rather than on the law,” he said in an interview.
US Senator Marco Rubio said it would be “a terrible mistake” for Trump to intervene in the case.
“It’s unrelated to trade policy,” he said.
Trump’s comments could factor into the legal proceedings in Canada, where Meng faces an extradition hearing before any handover to US authorities. She was released on bail on Tuesday.
“Meng’s lawyers could use Trump’s remarks as evidence to argue that the prosecution against her is politicized,” Robert Currie, a law professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, who specializes in extradition law, said in an e-mail.
Meng’s lawyers could ask for a stay of proceedings or ask Canadian Minister of Justice Jody Wilson-Raybould to not hand her over, he said.
Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland also said that Trump’s comments could affect the case.
“It will be up to Ms Meng’s lawyers whether they choose to raise comments in the US as part of their defense of Ms Meng,” she said at a news conference.
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