A former top White House lawyer in the Trump administration is at the center of a lawsuit over an FBI counterintelligence probe of a Chinese American scientist, Politico reports.
Yanping Chen is suing the FBI claiming the agency leaked information amid a campaign to harm the scientist after a six-year federal probe ended without bringing charges against her.
Chen’s attorneys subpoenaed Fox News and reporter Catherine Herridge to compel her to reveal the source of information used in her 2017 reports.
Attorney Patrick Philbin is representing right-wing network and Herridge, who now works for CBS.
Chen was the subject of an FBI probe that initially suspected her of lying about her work on the Chinese space program on immigration forms.
In 2016 she was notified that she would not be facing charges in connection with the investigation after two search warrants were issued and her devices were seized.
Herridge reporting on the investigation and the decision not to charge Chen.
Chen, who operated a graduate program, alleges that enrollment fell and funding for her graduate program dried up after Herridge’s reporting on Fox News.
The FBI, DOJ, the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security are named in the 2018 lawsuit.
Chen is seeking damages along with an admission of wrongdoing for violations of the Privacy Act related to her case.
Despite dozens of depositions, Chen’s lawyers haven’t determined who was behind the disclosures, prompting them to look at Fox News and Herridge in an effort to unmask the leaker, the report said.
Politico’s Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein write that, “The lawsuit has steadily advanced for five years despite generating little attention. Yet it represents the collision of a wide range of Washington interests and issues, carrying implications for how journalists’ First Amendment protections are balanced against the need to prevent leaks of sensitive government information that implicates privacy rights. Cooper noted in court Tuesday that while Congress passed the Privacy Act almost five decades ago, lawmakers have “not seen fit to pass a reporters’ shield law.”
