Written by 
Eunice Lam
Next Digital founder Jimmy Lai Chee-ying admitted he had referred former US army general Jack Keane and former US deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz to then Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen, who had hoped to understand then US president Donald Trump’s administration’s stance on Taiwan, the court heard yesterday.
The court ruled in July that the 76-year-old tycoon had a case to answer in his national security trial, which resumed yesterday with Lai defending himself at West Kowloon Magistrates’ Court.
Questions from defense barrister Steven Kwan Man-wai revolved around Lai’s relationship with political figures in Taiwan, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Wearing a gray suit, Lai said he got to know Tsai even before he founded Apple Daily Taiwan in the early 2000s. They met from time to time after she became Taiwan’s president in 2016. He said the meetings were arranged by Tsai’s “right-hand man” Antonio Chang Ch’un-nan, vice president of the government-funded General Association of Chinese Culture, and were related to Taiwan’s domestic policies and his media business.
Before Beijing imposed the national security law promulgated in July 2020 on Hong Kong, Lai said he had referred Keane and Wolfowitz to Tsai as she wanted to know more about Trump’s stance on Taiwan at the time.
Lai also said his assistant Mark Simon helped him handle personal matters, including hiring Wolfowitz as his consultant in 2013.
He also confirmed that he transferred HK$118 million to Simon between 2013 and 2020 as donations to local pro-democracy political parties and US think tanks, but emphasized that he never donated to any overseas political groups.
Kwan cited evidence from a prosecution accomplice witness, former Apple Daily editorial writer Yeung Ching-kee, that Lai’s political stance became radical in 2018, to which Lai disagreed.
”If I was radical, I was radical all along,” Lai said.
He said that when meeting former US vice president Mike Pence and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo in July 2019 as well as then House speaker Nancy Pelosi in October 2019, he only called on them to express their support for Hong Kong but never asked them to take any concrete action.
Kwan also cited evidence from former Apple Daily publisher Cheung Kim-hung, also a prosecution accomplice witness, that Lai had told him “Don’t be scared” and “Run Apple Daily as usual” when Cheung visited Lai, who had been remanded in December 2020.
Lai first denied that he had given editorial instructions for Apple Daily and said he would never tell Cheung to run the newspaper in its “original way” when the national security law had already come into effect.
But when Kwan brought up the fact Lai had sent a photo of former chief secretary Anson Chan Fang On-sang to Cheung while meeting Pence in March 2019 – telling Cheung to use it “to maximum effect” – Lai agreed that it was an editorial instruction.
He added he had given another instruction to push for the “One Hongkonger, One Letter to Save Hong Kong” campaign in May 2020 that sought US intervention in the enactment of the national security law.
The trial continues today.
eunice.lam@singtaonewscorp.com