Academic that allegedly tried to plant former CIA boss as a Chinese agent in Trump's White House to be extradited

If the global military conquest game of Risk were updated for 2024, it would surely feature real-world game pieces like Gal Luft, the Israeli-American accused, along with a corrupt Chinese spymaster named Patrick Ho and a mysterious Chinese oil trader named Ye Jianming, of trying to place a puppet for Beijing—former CIA director James Woolsey—into President Trump’s first administration.

Luft was arrested in Cyprus in 2023 but fled while on bail. He has since been re-arrested and will be extradited to the United States within months, according to a Department of Justice letter filed Monday.

In this modern game of Risk, the objective of players like Luft and Ho was not only to profit from Beijing’s ambitions of displacing Washington as global hegemon, according to case filings, but to actively reshape U.S. policy in a way that would pull American forces back from critical regions like the Indo-Pacific.

But this wasn’t just a soft power play for minds and hearts involving corrupted influencers in U.S. government, academia, and think tanks.

Ho, Luft, and Ye, through a Chinese oil conglomerate called CEFC—which also played a central role in influence schemes targeting Hunter Biden—were allegedly involved in sharper traditional forms of power: brokering arms deals and sanction-busting oil trades with volatile Middle Eastern and African states, and America's adversaries.

While Luft’s case has been reported before, news of his extradition ahead of the upcoming U.S. election calls for a deeper dive into his 58-page indictment, a stunning document that suggests Patrick Ho and Ye Jianming and Gal Luft had direct access to President Xi Jinping and Russian leaders.

"I just got off the phone with Russia," Luft bragged to Ho once, after a co-conspirator requested Russian oil for a Chinese client. "I can get any source on the planet."

The case also highlights the complexity of Chinese influence plays targeting all sides of the political spectrum. Indeed, as U.S. investigators burrowed into the secret dealings of Luft – a geopolitics academic – he made news by turning the spotlight onto Hunter Biden’s dealings with the same shady cast of Beijing tycoons and spies that Luft was entangled with.

According to the Department of Justice indictment unsealed last year, in April 2015, in the early stages of Luft’s scheme, he sent an email to CC-2 – described as an agent of a Chinese military entity and president of a Hong Kong-based energy company – writing, "I really enjoyed meeting you. I’m sure we can have a lot of fun while making $$."

During this period, Luft and Ho allegedly began to cultivate Woolsey by familiarizing him with the details of Xi Jinping's signature global strategy, the Belt and Road Initiative, which sought to expand China's economic and geopolitical influence worldwide.

They carefully groomed Woolsey, inviting him to attend a "private meeting" in Washington, D.C., with Ye Jianming, the chairman of CEFC China Energy. Luft wrote in an email that Ye had "very close relations with President Xi Jinping,” according to the indictment.