The head of a Beltway-based think tank who has made accusations of corruption against President Biden has been indicted by the Department of Justice for unlawfully acting as a foreign agent for China and Iran.
Gal Luft, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Israel, stands accused of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in promoting the policy interests of Chinese principals and brokering the sale of sanctioned Iranian oil to China. The indictment was handed down under seal in late 2022, but the Department of Justice unsealed it this week.
“As alleged, Gal Luft, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen and co-head of a Maryland think tank, engaged in multiple, serious criminal schemes. He subverted foreign agent registration laws in the United States to seek to promote Chinese policies by acting through a former high-ranking U.S. Government official; he acted as a broker in deals for dangerous weapons and Iranian oil; and he told multiple lies about his crimes to law enforcement,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in a press release.
The indictment alleges that Luft sought to influence the Trump administration’s China policies through a high-ranking advisor to President Trump.
In a video obtained by the New York Post and published a week before the indictments against him were unsealed, Luft claims to have warned the FBI and DOJ about what he called a possible repeat of a “Russia collusion scandal — only this time with China.” The warning was given in March 2019 during a meeting with the agencies in Brussels.
The scandal happened anyway, according to Luft, because of “the DOJ’s cover-up.”
Luft questioned why the DOJ would come after him for what he contends is a bogus FARA case “when the mother of all FARA cases, the Bidens’ systemic influence-peddling on behalf of foreign governments, for which they raked [in] millions, goes unpunished?”
He also denied all the allegations in the indictment, including the implication that he is an arms dealer.
“I never traded a bullet in my entire life,” he said in the video.
Luft claimed he has “insider knowledge about the group and individuals that enriched the Biden family.”
He also talked about periodic payments from a Chinese energy company called CEFC in the five and six figures to Hunter and Jim Biden for their FBI connections and to promote China’s economic interests.
In the video, Luft said CEFC, which operated a nonprofit arm in the United States, had powerful connections, including to the Clinton Foundation, and therefore none of its officers would face charges related to the ones Luft himself faces.
He challenged the DOJ to unseal the indictments so that the American people can see the “length the government is willing to go to weaponize the justice system to punish whistleblowers like me.”
Luft is now a fugitive, claiming he cannot receive justice in a New York court. He claimed in the video that the prosecutor and judge in his case already agreed that Luft would not be permitted to bring up the subjects of the meeting in Brussels or even Joe Biden in his own defense.
Luft’s think tank, called the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, has deep intelligence ties, as evidenced by its boasting former CIA Director James Woolsey and former national security adviser Robert McFarlane as advisers, per the New York Post.