This is it!! #MengWanzhou hearing in US federal court in Brooklyn begins!! She is appearing via video from Vancouver. She confirms her presence. Court gets off to an awkward start when judge calls her Ms Wang, and has to be corrected....
Judge explains she has been charged with conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud. Meng says she understands the charges
"How do you plead to the charges?" MENG: "NOT GUILTY"
!! Asst US Attorney David Kessler confirms a deferred prosecution agreement, signed by US govt and Meng !!
If Meng fulfills obligations under DPA “the government will move to dismiss the charges against her at the end of the deferral period” on Dec 1 2022
If she fails to do so, she will be prosecuted
Meng agrees that a statement of facts re case is true to best of Meng’s belief. Meng agrees to admissibility of statement of facts if prosecution is undertaken
Meng agrees that she and her lawyers will not attempt to contradict these facts. She agrees that she will not say or imply that this agreement was "involuntary, unknowing or coerced", and doing so constitutes a breach of the DPA
In return, the prosecution will recommend Meng’s release on a personal recognizance bond, and Canada Justice Minister will be informed of the deal
Meng confirms the statement of facts was translated for her. She confirms the statement is all true, that she was not “forced or threatened” to sign the DPA
Judge: Have you taken any medication that would impair you?
Meng: “I did not take any medication or illegal substance”
Judge: "I find the govt has established a bona fide DPA."
She signs the bond. She ends by making same mistake she made at the start: "Thank you Ms Wang...Ms Meng."
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A thread ensues: Canada has a handful of federal electorates that are ethnic Chinese majority/near-majority seats, all clustered around Richmond BC & Markham ON. I've gone thru #Elxn44 numbers & all experienced a plunge in Tory support, large and remarkable in context IMO. 2/
The context is this: there was no big loss in Tory vote share across Canada (-0.5%), in BC (-0.7%) or Ontario (+1.9%). Where there were losses, the PPC often gained. Anyway. Here goes: /3
In Steveston-Richmond East (47% Chinese), Con vote share was -8.1% and Lib share +7.5%. A comfortable Tory win in 2019, now a comfortable Lib win. "But this seat often yo-yos," you say. Well sure, but let's look next door 4/
You know, there are still about 3,400 mail-in ballots to be counted in #VancouverGranville, where Liberal Taleeb Noormohamed currently leads by 258 votes
Only 45% of the 6275 special ballots have been counted
In Richmond, BC, and Markham, Ontario, the Conservative vote plunged in Canada’s most Chinese electorates. Ousted Richmond MP Kenny Chiu had doors slammed in his face. He blames "disinformation" and "lies" abt his stances on HK and China scmp.com/news/china/dip… via @scmpnews
He suffered a hefty 8.4% prelim swing. Fellow Richmond Tory Alice Wong suffered worse: 11.9%. That dwarfed the BC and national trends
Across Canada, in Markham-Unionville, Cda's most Chinese electorate of all, the Tory MP suffered 7% swing, and the Liberals picked up a whopping 10.3%.
That defied Ontario trend that saw the Lib vote down 2.7% and the Tory vote up 2 points!
An addendum: I feel I should explain the timeline of how I finally got hold of these ATIP results, which were delivered in the form of an 85-page PDF which was burned onto a DVD, which was sent to me in the mail, which is a TOTALLY NORMAL way to send a small digital document