OTTAWA — An explosive report from Britain’s Mail on Sunday alleges that a man it describes as a senior Chinese intelligence officer, and a British businessman indicted with him in the United States over a plot to silence a Los Angeles critic of Xi Jinping, sought damaging information on seven British parliamentarians who have challenged Beijing.
The newspaper also reported that a Canadian journalist shared messages revealing his involvement in the network’s foreign interference activity, and that he had been commissioned by the network, directed by a Chinese intelligence officer, to produce articles and podcasts attacking the United States, before he became a confidential source for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
This morning that journalist, a controversial Canadian podcaster and writer named James Di Fiore, responding to questions from The Bureau, identified himself as the source described in a sworn FBI affidavit, and shared the court filing, which describes the source discussing a potentially violent plot against the dissident artist Hui Bo.
“My work was through the Milwaukee FBI field office,” Di Fiore wrote. “Last year I became friends with Hui Bo, the Chinese dissident and artist I was hired to kidnap in 2023, while I was a confidential human source for the FBI.”
“I am the CHS in the court document below,” he added. “This is the document that outed me to John Miller and Cui Guanghai. While it does not mention me by name, it did publish verbatim the conversations I had with John Miller while I was in California.”
Those conversations, recorded in October 2023 as Xi prepared to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, show the plot against Hui moving from surveillance to talk of shooting him.
According to the Mail on Sunday, Di Fiore has claimed that the FBI did not pay him a promised US$150,000 for his role in the covert counterintelligence sting.
The Bureau has sent detailed questions to the FBI seeking comment. The agency confirmed after this story was published Monday that it will not comment.
The affidavit describes a widening set of tasks Miller allegedly gave the source. They ranged from staging protests and producing a documentary and internet articles attacking the United States, to locating Hui’s home, arranging to watch him from a neighboring apartment, placing a tracker on his car and collecting cash for the job. It also states that in October 2023 an FBI special agent in the Milwaukee field office told the investigating agent that Miller and Cui had enlisted the FBI asset in the plot to stop Hui from protesting at the summit.
The work Di Fiore has described, to the Mail on Sunday and in identifying himself as the source, began well before that.
He staged protests that presented Beijing’s positions as American opinion, and he produced articles and podcasts that cast the United States in a negative light. The affidavit says the source had reported being in direct contact with Miller for more than two years.
It says Miller had tasked the source with “staging protests in the United States” and with “producing a documentary and internet articles portraying the United States’ military and human rights record in a negative light.”
The harassment of Hui is only one strand of the FBI’s sweeping case against Miller and Cui.
Federal prosecutors in Wisconsin have also charged the pair with conspiring to obtain American missiles, air defense radar, drones and a cryptographic device used to secure classified communications, for unlawful export to China. Serbian police arrested both men in Belgrade in April 2025 at Washington’s request. Weeks after they were moved to house arrest, they slipped their electronic monitors and disappeared. A Balkan investigative outlet later reported they had flown to Beijing on a private jet.
As to the plot against Hui, the FBI asset, who Di Fiore says was him, traveled to Los Angeles on October 16 at Miller’s direction, according to the affidavit.
Miller wanted the location of Hui’s home and relayed that Cui wanted the source to arrange a viewing of the neighboring apartment so a camera could watch him.
“They want to keep tracks on him even after Xi’s gone,” Miller said.
“Xi just happens to be coming,” Miller continued. “The boss is coming that’s it. Apart from that they want to try to get something on him, they want to know what he’s doing. You know? They want that apartment if its close enough to him. [Cui] said he sent you the details.”
The investigating agent was blunt about what the phrase revealed. “Based on my training and experience and the facts developed in this investigation, I believe that Miller’s use of the phrase ‘the boss’ to refer to President Xi demonstrates Miller’s awareness that he was acting at the direction and control of the PRC Government,” the agent wrote.
Two days later Miller said “the real pay day” would be “putting the siding up on that guy,” which the investigating agent interpreted as an assault.
The FBI asset asked whether “the snatch” was still an option.
The agent describes that as a reference to an earlier, unrecorded conversation in which the two had discussed kidnapping Hui. Miller said the people above him wanted it to look like a mugging. The complaint and the Los Angeles indictment allege interstate stalking and conspiracy.
When the source asked, “Do you care if its bullets versus baseball bat?” Miller replied that “you’d get paid more for bullets” and described targeting “the knees and ankles.”
The source floated “your price of 100k.” Miller said the attack still had to be “sanctioned,” most likely by “somebody from Beijing,” and that the message to Hui should be that he would not be walking for a while. “Not giving him brain damage,” Miller said. “Just lower body damage.”
The FBI asset then asked, “And leave a fortune cookie so they know it was a China man right?”
“Oh no they don’t want any connection to a China man,” Miller answered.
At another point the source told Miller the plan was “overkill.”
Miller agreed, and said it was “all about face.” On November 6, Miller reported that Cui had told him “The head guy said no,” because “they are not Russian.” The people directing the operation still wanted the statues.
The Justice Department has since said that the two people Miller and Cui enlisted in October 2023 were “affiliated with and acting at the direction of the FBI.” If Di Fiore is the source, the voice raising the fortune cookie and “the snatch” on those recordings was a man working for the FBI.
The filing is an April 11, 2025 criminal complaint in the Central District of California, supported by the affidavit of an FBI special agent in the Los Angeles field division.
It sought arrest warrants for Miller, a British citizen and permanent resident of the United States, and Cui, a Chinese national based in China, on charges of interstate stalking and conspiracy.
The affidavit never names its confidential human source, and American authorities have not confirmed Di Fiore’s account.
The Bureau’s questions to the FBI include how he was handled through Milwaukee and whether the FBI coordinated with Canadian agencies.