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Trump was reportedly unaware of plan to arrest Huawei exec

Officials apparently didn't want to impede trade talks between Trump and China's president last weekend.

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Huawei Under U.S. Criminal Investigation For Illegal Iran Sales

Huawei's chief financial officer is due to appear at a bail hearing on Friday.

 VCG via Getty Images

President Donald Trump was reportedly not told about the plan to arrest Huawei's chief financial officer, Reuters reported Friday, citing unnamed sources. 

Meng Wanzhou was arrested Saturday in Canada at the request of the US, which is investigating an alleged program to evade US sanctions against Iran.

According to Reuters, Trump wasn't informed that Meng, the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, would be detained because Trump was meeting that day with Chinese President Xi Jinping to try to end the US trade war with China.

Meng is scheduled to appear at a bail hearing Friday in Vancouver and faces extradition to the US.

After her arrest, Chinese state media accused the US of trying to "stifle" Huawei's global expansion and called for Meng's release. However, the country is apparently separating the arrest from the trade talks, the South China Morning Post reported Friday.

Trump backed up that notion early Friday on Twitter: "China talks are going very well!" he tweeted.  

Japan is the latest country considering a ban on government use of equipment from Chinese tech giants Huawei and ZTE out of concern over hacking and intelligence leaks.

Huawei and ZTE have had a rough year in the US. AT&T and Verizon dropped plans to sell Huawei phones after government pressure, and ZTE faced a ban preventing US businesses from working with it until Trump intervened. US intelligence and military officials have expressed intense concern about the security of Huawei and ZTE products.  

Neither the White House nor Huawei immediately responded to requests for comment.

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