The threat of the Chinese Communist Party is ever-present in the ranks of government.
The Washington Post reported Friday that John Harold Rogers — a former senior advisor to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors working in the International Finance Division — was arrested that day for allegedly leaking sensitive information to the Chinese government while taking massive payments and embarking on fully paid trips to the country.
Rogers worked for the Fed from 2010 to 2021, beginning his tenure at the central bank under former President Barack Obama’s administration.
After his departure, Rogers moved to Shanghai, China, and began working as a professor at Fudan University. He was arrested in his hometown of Vienna, Virginia.
Prosecutors allege Rogers had access to briefs and spreadsheets that could “allow China to manipulate the U.S. market, in a manner similar to insider trading.”
The Post reported Rogers first made contact with Chinese government agents in 2013 via email and began traveling there.
In 2018, he allegedly started providing information to two Chinese contacts posing as graduate students who the indictment said “worked for the intelligence and security apparatus of China.”
The contacts would ask Rogers for information which he would then allegedly request from the Fed.
Colleagues at the Fed would provide sensitive information to Rogers with clear instructions that he was not to share it, marking files as “INTERNAL FR/OFFICIAL USE” or giving him briefing books marked “Nonpublic Information FOR YOUR USE ONLY DO NOT DISSEMINATE.”
Is the Chinese spy problem worse than American citizens are being led to believe?
This conduct allegedly began in 2018, with authorities questioning Rogers in 2020. The economist denied giving sensitive information to anyone outside the Fed.
Although the specifics beyond 2020 of Rogers’ association with his contacts are scarce, it is known he was living in China, as one contact asked him about a “class” in Qingdao to which he would need to travel.
While all his expenses were paid during his visits, Rogers also received $448,000 in 2023 for what the indictment called work as a “part-time professor at a Chinese university.”
Reuters reported comments from a spokesperson of the Chinese embassy who stated that “China is a country that upholds the rule of law,” adding that the nation opposes “any smear and attack on China with so-called ‘spy risks.’”
Rogers is charged with conspiracy to commit economic espionage and with making false statements to a federal agent. The first charge has a 15-year maximum prison sentence.
While President Donald Trump should be concerned with woke holdouts from former President Joe Biden’s term, the CCP is still a very real threat to this government.
Rogers is not a Chinese national. He is an American.
The allegations look pretty damning in painting a picture of a government employee who allegedly colluded with the CCP for over a decade.
CCP members have been outspoken in their preferring an Obama and Biden presidency over a Trump administration.
In December of 2020, The New York Post reported that professor Di Dongsheng — vice dean of the School of International Relations at Renmin University — had recently given a lecture where he stated China had “people at the top of America’s core inner circle” in light of Biden’s recent election while telling audiences that the Trump administration presented problems in its willingness to engage in a trade war with them.
With Trump’s recent calls for renewed tariffs on China, it’s clear the CCP would rather see almost anyone else in office.
Rogers’ indictment should sound the alarms for the Trump team.
The federal government needs to root out any bureaucrats willing to sell out the country.
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