{"id":246449,"date":"2020-12-09T09:11:32","date_gmt":"2020-12-09T09:11:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/political\/deal-to-secure-meng-wanzhous-release-unlikely-says-former-trump-adviser-john-bolton.html"},"modified":"2020-12-09T09:11:32","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T09:11:32","slug":"deal-to-secure-meng-wanzhous-release-unlikely-says-former-trump-adviser-john-bolton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/political\/deal-to-secure-meng-wanzhous-release-unlikely-says-former-trump-adviser-john-bolton.html","title":{"rendered":"Deal to secure Meng Wanzhou&#8217;s release unlikely, says former Trump adviser John Bolton"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span><\/p>\n<p>U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s former national security adviser is casting doubt on reports suggesting a deal is in the works between the U.S. Justice Department and representatives of Meng Wanzhou to allow the Chinese telecom executive to return home.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It doesn&#8217;t sound to me like it&#8217;s a negotiation, it&#8217;s anywhere close to a resolution,&#8221; John Bolton told host Vassy Kapelos on\u00a0CBC News Network&#8217;s <em>Power  Politics<\/em> in an interview airing Tuesday.<\/p>\n<section id=\"inread-wrapper-id-33375457\"><\/section>\n<p>&#8220;With the, honestly, limited amount of information we have, I&#8217;m not sure that this is a development. I&#8217;d wait by the phone to hear further progress.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Meng, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Co., was detained in December 2018 while she was changing planes in Vancouver. She was arrested on a U.S. extradition request over allegations she lied to a Hong Kong banker in August 2013 about Huawei&#8217;s control of a subsidiary accused of violating U.S. sanctions against Iran.<\/p>\n<p>She has consistently denied the charges against her.<\/p>\n<p>The deal, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal, would see Meng freed from Canadian custody in exchange for signing a deferred prosecution agreement that would require the Chinese executive to admit to criminal wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s unusual for this kind of agreement [to be signed] with respect to an individual,&#8221; Bolton said. &#8220;What&#8217;s called a deferred prosecution agreement\u00a0is, to my knowledge, almost exclusively used for deals with corporations or business entities that play out over a sustained period of time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Bolton said it&#8217;s likely the story was leaked by someone acting on Meng&#8217;s\u00a0behalf\u00a0and reflects\u00a0a proposal made to the U.S. Department of Justice.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The prosecutors are obligated to take any good-faith compromise proposal seriously,&#8221; he said. &#8220;They don&#8217;t have to accept it, but they have to show their own good faith in turn.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Shortly after Meng&#8217;s arrest, Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were detained in China, where they remain in detention facing charges of spying for Canada.<\/p>\n<p>Bolton said the detention of Canadian citizens on baseless accusations of espionage demonstrates that China is a &#8220;significant threat to the West as a whole&#8221; and that the regime will treat more countries in the same way as its power and influence grows.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Watch:\u00a0China&#8217;s reaction to Meng arrest &#8216;close to barbaric,&#8217; says John Bolton<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>  <span><span class=\"mediaEmbed\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wordpressdynamos.com\/timesofnewscdn\/USA\/28637_PP-Bolton-08-12-2020.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"thumbnail\" \/><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"video-item-title\">China&#8217;s reaction to Meng arrest &#8216;close to barbaric,&#8217; says John Bolton.<\/h3>\n<p class=\"video-show-name\">Power and Politics<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"formattedDate video-time-stamp\" aria-label=\"From 12 hours ago\" aria-hidden=\"false\">12 hours ago<\/span><span class=\"a11y\">Video<\/span><span class=\"media-caption\">&#8220;If this is the way China behaves before their power increases further in the world, imagine how it will behave after that,&#8221; said former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton.<!-- --> <!-- -->9:07<\/span><\/span><\/span>  <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think the entire Chinese behaviour on this has been close to barbaric with Meng Wanzhou. There is no doubt there is a legitimate law enforcement issue here,&#8221; he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>China also has\u00a0placed a number of trade hurdles in front of Canadian exporters since Meng&#8217;s arrest \u2014 banning imports from two canola producers, tying up shipments over paperwork and putting unusual obstacles in the way of Canadian soybean and pea exporters.<\/p>\n<p>Bolton\u00a0dismissed the suggestion that Trump aggravated Beijing by floating the idea that Meng could be released as a part of trade discussions between the U.S. and China.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think there is any serious effort, at least before I left, for the administration to do anything with that remark,&#8221; Bolton said. &#8220;I think it would have been inappropriate. It was certainly unhelpful when he said it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think it gave people the wrong impression. It&#8217;s not the way the Justice Department pursues such a case.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile Canada&#8217;s Ambassador to China Dominic Barton told a parliamentary committee that Kovrig and Spavor are coping well with their second year of imprisonment.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They are both very healthy, physically and mentally,&#8221; he said Tuesday evening by video conference. &#8220;I&#8217;m deeply inspired by their resilience and their mindset. Its incredible given what they are going through.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Barton also said that Chinese authorities, paranoid about COVID-19, denied consular access to the two men from January to November.<\/p>\n<p>He was granted on-site virtual consular access in November, following similar virtual visits with the two Canadians a month earlier.<\/p>\n<p>Barton offered the update in testimony Thursday night before the House of Commons special committee on Canada-China relations.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Article source: https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/john-bolton-meng-wanzhou-1.5833336?cmp=rss<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s former national security adviser is casting doubt on reports suggesting a deal is in the works between the U.S. Justice Department and representatives of Meng Wanzhou to allow the Chinese telecom executive to return home. &#8220;It doesn&#8217;t sound to me like it&#8217;s a negotiation, it&#8217;s anywhere close to a resolution,&#8221; John [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":246450,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-246449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}