Trump allegedly intervened in Meng Wanzhou’s extradition case

The Canadian attorney general said the allegations of former US President Donald Trump’s involvement in the extradition case of Huawei finance manager Meng Wanzhou are irrelevant as he is no longer on duty.

Meng is accused of bank fraud in the US for misleading HSBC about Huawei’s trade deals in Iran, causing the bank to violate US sanctions.

In an interview with Reuters 10 days after Meng’s arrest, Trump said that he would intervene in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Meng if it serves national security interests or helps conclude a trade agreement with China. Meng’s lawyers argued that Trump’s statements jeopardized the fairness of the extradition proceedings. Canadian lawyers said such a debate was “controversial” in documents submitted ahead of the hearings scheduled for next month.

“The facts on which it is based – statements by an absent president about a possible intervention that supposedly never materialized in this case to realize a trade deal that has been successfully negotiated for a long time – has no past, present, or anticipation of impact on these cases.”

Meng will appear in court on March 1 for the final phase of the extradition trials, which are scheduled to end in May. There is an administrative hearing for his case on Friday.

Source: Reuters