According to the article the State discovered, way late, that the kind of ties he had with China were not of the kind they assumed guilt of and heavily publicized when they went to destroy his professional life, but instead of the kind people have when they are born elsewhere.

When they did find out about this, they instead tried to make him admit to some other non criminal kind of ties to justify their ruining of his life, and when that failed they simply bailed out.

It's heartbreaking.

What people don’t realize is that a prosecutor is like any other job - pressure from the boss to deliver, long hours, “sunk cost fallacy” and all the other crap you see in big corporates.

Not to excuse the behavior, but more highlighting what contributes to it.

Once a prosecutor thinks he has a case against you, you’re pretty fucked to be honest because it rare for them to ever admit fault or back down.

I don't know how the senate is set up in the US, but prossecutors are supposed to decide freely. The "boss" is in the worst case just another layer in the prossecution, that's not just a job but an institution.

The general attourney from Germany denied the NSA case because he found no evidence. He's also bound by orders from the justice department ("weisungsgebunden")

It's just like any other job, except that the job is to destroy people's lives.

> were the affiliations unremarkable and not reportable but prosecutors screwed up?

Yes, the prosecutors royally screwed up.

From the article:

"Prosecutors had floated the idea of a deferred prosecution agreement, which would have allowed him to return to work and apply for government grants in the future. In return, said his lawyer, Mr. Fisher, he would have to admit to having some ties to China, none of them a violation of the law."

So why would Chen have to declare them if they aren't illegal?

Chen has to declare foreign conflicts of interest if he takes federal grants.

There was no such legal requirement on this grant.

>"What tipped the scale, the people said, was an interview by prosecutors this month of a senior Energy Department official who is considered an authority on what disclosures are material on grant forms. The official confirmed that the 2017 form did not require disclosures of Chen’s ties to the technology university or other Chinese government organizations and programs, one person said"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/mit-gang-ch...

The prosecution themselves have said that there was no reporting requirement for that.

I got my initial understanding of the reg. from an article on Charles Lieber’s case, which boiled them down to “must report conflicts of interest.” The reality (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/coi/index.htm) is more nuanced and up to the courts to decide, but as a one sentence summary I think it’s fair.

Sounds like a prosecutor was afraid to get sued into oblivion/have his future political ambitions ruined by this affair, and strong-armed the good doctor into signing a document to avoid this going to court, where outcomes are pretty much random.

* tried to strong-arm. He didn't accept the deal.

>Sounds like a prosecutor was afraid to get sued into oblivion

Federal prosecutors cannot be sued:

https://fedsoc.org/events/prosecutorial-immunity

> he would have to admit to having some ties to China, none of them a violation of the law.

What's the point?