Huawei Lawyer’s prior work at Justice Department poses conflicts: US Prosecutors

Last week, the US prosecutors filed a motion to disqualify James Cole due to its work at the justice department, and Huawei calls it a mockery in the adversarial process.

Huawei will go against US prosecutor’ motion of disqualifying its defense lawyer

According to Reuters, Huawei Technologies’ lawyer James Cole’s prior work at the US Department of Justice created conflicts of interest that should disqualify him from defending the Chinese telecom giant in a case of alleged bank fraud and sanction violations in Ira, US prosecutors revealed in a filing on May 10.

Last week, US prosecutors filed a motion to remove Cole, who serves as deputy attorney general, the No. 2 official at the justice department, between 2011, and 2015. But the motion was sealed and classified.

“There is a ‘substantial risk’ that Cole could use ‘confidential factual information’ obtained while serving as DAG to ‘materially advance’ Huawei’s current defense strategy,” the prosecutors said, according to a redacted copy of the U.S. motion filed on Friday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, New York.

On the next day, Huawei made a media statement regarding cole and said: “The Justice Department’s motion to disqualify James Cole makes a mockery of the adversarial process,”.

“The government has known since 2017 that Mr. Cole represented Huawei in this matter. Now, two years later, not only does the Justice Department seek to strip Huawei of counsel of its choice, but it does so while concealing from Huawei and the public virtually all of the facts on which it bases its motion”.

The company also expressed its trust on the protections of the American criminal justice system — including the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, that the company said cannot be so easily subverted.