The U.S. Department of Justice opened its long-awaited criminal case against Huawei Technologies this week, telling a Brooklyn federal jury that the Chinese telecommunications giant built its global empire through what a prosecutor described as a two-decade campaign of theft and deception targeting American companies.
“Theft, lies, cover-up,” DOJ trial attorney Taylor Stout said during the government’s opening statement, according to Breitbart News. “For 20 years, that’s how Huawei, a massive Chinese telecommunications company, victimized American companies and abused the American financial system, all in an effort to dominate the telecommunications industry around the world.”
The proceedings mark the first time an entity of Huawei’s size and profile has been forced to defend itself before a jury in the United States, a milestone that underscores just how far Washington has moved in its confrontation with Beijing over technology, security, and economic power.
A Two-Year Drama Years in the Making
Huawei was first charged by U.S. law enforcement in 2019, shortly after its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, was arrested in Canada. The case stalled during the Biden administration, but President Trump’s Justice Department revived and pressed forward with the prosecution — a decision that has now placed one of China’s most strategically important companies on trial in an American courtroom.
The charges against Huawei form a sprawling list: racketeering, bank fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, stealing trade secrets, and violating sanctions against Iran and North Korea. Prosecutors allege the company’s conduct was not a series of isolated incidents but part of a coordinated strategy to acquire technology and market position by any means necessary.
Beyond the specific charges, the trial is expected to test broader allegations that Huawei functions as an instrument of the Chinese state and forms part of a wider strategy of espionage against Americans and American companies. The U.S. government has designated Huawei a national security threat, and the FBI has warned that the company could be attempting to disrupt the American nuclear arsenal.
Inside the Courtroom: A Stolen Robot Named ‘Tappy’
The jury has already begun hearing from witnesses who say they experienced Huawei’s tactics firsthand. As Breitbart reported, a former T-Mobile executive testified Tuesday about three incidents in 2013 involving Huawei employees violating agreements governing access to the company’s testing labs — including the theft of a key component of a robot system nicknamed “Tappy.”
The government has framed the trial as an opportunity for Huawei’s alleged victims to have their say after years of complaints that went unanswered. The anecdotes of stolen equipment and broken agreements serve as concrete illustrations of what prosecutors describe as a much larger pattern.
What remains unknown, however, is precisely how tightly Huawei is bound to the Chinese government. All tech companies operating in China are legally required to cooperate with the country’s intelligence services and to hand over personal data when asked. Chinese President Xi Jinping has consistently championed Huawei, and the company has drawn admirers as far afield as Venezuela, where retired president Nicolás Maduro was famously a fan.
Trump’s Long Push Against Huawei
The trial is the culmination of a pressure campaign that Trump has pursued across two terms in office. In 2019, his Commerce Department added Huawei to the so-called Entity List, barring American companies from doing business with it. He also prohibited Americans from using Huawei equipment and put in place export controls designed to prevent the company from acquiring semiconductors and machinery that rely on American components.
In his second term, Trump turned his attention to building up competitors. He furnished loans for American companies providing 5G technology to challenge Huawei on its own turf, and approved a merger between Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks on the explicit advice of his intelligence agencies, with the goal of creating a globally scaled rival.
That merger faced resistance from left-leaning state attorneys general, including California’s Rob Bonta and Colorado’s Phil Weiser. But a federal judge ruled in August that the merger is in the public’s interest, clearing the way for the combined company to compete more effectively.
A Trial With Broader Implications
The case arrives amid escalating concerns about Chinese penetration of American infrastructure. China has been accused for years of infiltrating U.S. institutions, and the FBI recently revealed what officials described as an unprecedented Chinese hack targeting the U.S. power grid. Individual Chinese citizens have been charged in various cases, but never before has a corporate entity of Huawei’s scale been made to answer to a jury.
According to Breitbart, the trial is expected to run for roughly three months — a timeline that would carry the proceedings through a period that includes Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington to meet with Trump.
For Huawei, the stakes go beyond potential fines or penalties. A conviction by an American jury would formalize the Justice Department’s characterization of the company as a criminal enterprise, a label that could reshape how governments and businesses around the world treat the firm. For the U.S. government, the trial represents a rare public airing of evidence that officials have long cited in private briefings and policy directives.
The prosecution’s opening statement set an aggressive tone, and the coming weeks will determine whether the government can translate its broad allegations into a verdict. Huawei has denied wrongdoing and is expected to mount a vigorous defense.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2026/09/23/dojs-trial-against-huawei-for-targeting-american-companies-with-a-massive-criminal-scheme-picks-up-steam/