President Trump has done much, fast, during the first days of his second term in office. But one of the things he has not yet done is get Jimmy Lai released from prison, where the ex-publisher has been languishing for more than 1,500 days.
Lai is again testifying in his kangaroo-court trial in Hong Kong.
In one session last week, the court interrogated Lai about his attempt in 2020 to get permission from the government to visit the United States, where he had hoped to see his granddaughter and possibly Vice President Mike Pence (“Jimmy Lai denies concealing plan to meet with US officials when he applied to lift travel ban in 2020,” February 3, 2024).
Judge Alex Lee, who rejected the tycoon’s bid to lift the travel ban in June 2020, said Lai’s nondisclosure of the planned meeting with US officials could imply that what he told the court previously “may not be genuine.”…
[Lai] maintained that seeing his granddaughter was his priority and rejected suggestions that he was using it as an excuse to go to the US to meet with officials.
“I had to go to see her…. For the convenience I [planned to go] to other meetings [but it] doesn’t mean that I used her as an excuse,” he said in court.
The court’s focus suggests that this is the sort of thing on which Lai’s fate depends: his exact motive for wanting permission to travel to the United States, whether seeing his granddaughter or seeing U.S. officials had higher priority in his mind with respect to a trip he was not allowed to take; the exact shading of his meaning when he sought permission to travel in 2020, etc.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party couldn’t care less about such niceties. No matter how Lai answers whatever he is asked during the trial, the Party-directed court can rummage through the transcript to find details to support the predetermined verdict of sedition, collusion, and whatever else the Party wants to call standing up for democracy and freedom.
100 percent
During the recent U.S. presidential campaign, Trump said that getting China to release Lai, the former publisher of the Hong Kong paper Apple Daily, would be a snap. “100 percent, I’ll get him out. He’ll be easy to get out.” The candidate should not have asserted this. As we all know, Lai’s fate depends on what the CCP decides to do, not on Trump’s prowess as a negotiator.
Xi Jinping is unlikely to release Lai at all; if at all, only with strings attached. If China did offer the United States a deal to release Lai, what the U.S. would have to give in exchange might well be unacceptable.
Nevertheless, Trump should push hard for Lai’s release. Soon after Trump won the election, Kristina Arriaga, formerly on the United States Commission on the International Religious Freedom, made the case.
“By prioritizing Lai’s release on Day 1, Trump and Rubio could signal a decisive shift in our foreign policy: a bold reaffirmation of America’s role as the unwavering defender of liberty and the champion of those who dare defy oppression.”
