by WorldTribune Staff, September 20, 2026 Non-AI Real World News
Judge James Boasberg on nine occasions hosted Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-funded law exchanges, including during his tenure as presiding judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court which reviews some of the government’s most sensitive applications for foreign-intelligence surveillance and searches, a report said.
Judge James Boasberg
“The program is also underwritten by the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF),” states a 2023 Washington program flyer published by Tsinghua University.
The funding connection appears in the program’s own recruitment material, investigative journalist Natalie Winters revealed in a Sept. 17 substack report.
The CUSEF is part of Beijing’s United Front system, which combines political influence with intelligence operations.
In a November 2025 warning, House China committee Chairman John Moolenaar identified CUSEF as an instrument of CCP political warfare and warned that organizations like it help the communist regime in Beijing “identify foreigners who the party could exploit.”
At his 2021 confirmation hearing to be CIA chief, William Burns said he had ended the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s relationship with CUSEF after becoming the think tank’s president.
“We were increasingly worried about the expansion of Chinese influence operations,” Burns told the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Two years after Burns’s testimony, CUSEF’s name and logo appeared on a flyer recruiting Chinese law students for a Washington program whose hosts included Boasberg, Winters reported.
“The U.S.-Asia Institute, or USAI, which runs the exchange, kept a detailed accounting of his participation,” Winters wrote.
The exchange’s annual host lists place Boasberg in the program every year from 2015 through 2020, then again in 2022, 2023 and 2024. The latest roster labels him a “9X Host.”
The Tsinghua flyer promised “exclusive conversations with influential actors” across American government, law and business, along with opportunities to observe proceedings that “few are ever able to witness firsthand.”
Applicants had to be Chinese citizens studying law at Chinese universities, with sufficient English to converse with senior American leaders. The program offered lodging, local transportation and some meals, placing participants at a hotel near the Capitol and Supreme Court.
“The law exchange also had a Communist Party official involved at its inception,” Winters added.
