Linda Sun, former deputy chief of staff to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, was charged on Sept. 3 with acting on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), federal prosecutors said.
Sun, 41, and her husband, Chris Hu, 40, were arrested on the morning of Sept. 3 at their home on Long Island.
In July, the FBI searched the address but didn’t release details.
Sun was also charged with visa fraud, alien smuggling, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, while Hu was charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, bank fraud, and misuse of means of identification.
According to an unsealed indictment, Sun, a Chinese-born naturalized U.S. citizen, received millions of dollars for her activities carried out at the behest of People’s Republic of China (PRC) and CCP officials, and she neither registered her role as a Chinese agent with the attorney general, nor declared the benefits she had received as a New York State (NYS) government employee is required to do.
“As alleged, while appearing to serve the people of New York as Deputy Chief of Staff within the New York State Executive Chamber, the defendant and her husband actually worked to further the interests of the Chinese government and the CCP,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said.
“The illicit scheme enriched the defendant’s family to the tune of millions of dollars. Our Office will act decisively to prosecute those who serve as undisclosed agents of a foreign government,” he added.
The couple pleaded not guilty during an initial court appearance on Tuesday afternoon in Brooklyn and will be released on bond. Sun has been barred from having any contact with the Chinese consulate and mission.
Her defense lawyer, Jarrod Schaeffer, said, “We’re looking forward to addressing these charges in court. Our client is understandably upset that these charges have been brought.”
Sun, also known as Wen Sun, Ling Da Sun, and Linda Hu, held various roles in the NYS government from about 2012 until 2023, during the tenures of Andrew Cuomo and Hochul, including as Cuomo’s deputy chief diversity officer from February 2018 to July 2020 and Hochul’s deputy chief of staff from about September 2021 until September 2022.
The indictment did not mention Cuomo and Hochul by name, instead referring to them as Politician-1 and Politician-2.
Sun was also deputy commissioner for strategic business development for the NYS Department of Labor from about September 2022 until March 2023, when she was fired, the document said.
Hochul’s office didn’t respond to The Epoch Times request for comment. In a statement provided to media outlets, a spokesperson for her office said: “This individual was hired by the Executive Chamber more than a decade ago. We terminated her employment in March 2023 after discovering evidence of misconduct, immediately reported her actions to law enforcement and have assisted law enforcement throughout this process.”
According to the indictment, Sun allegedly engaged in “numerous political activities in the interests of the PRC and the CCP” on their behalf while working at the NYS government.
The activities allegedly include blocking requests from representatives of the Taiwanese government to meet with or invite Cuomo and Hochul, altering the governors’ messaging to remove references to Taiwan and human rights abuses in Xinjiang, obtaining official NYS proclamations for a high-ranking Chinese consulate official—PRC Official-1—without proper authorization, attempting to facilitate a trip to China by Hochul, and arranging meetings between visiting delegations from the Chinese communist regime and NYS government officials, according to the document.
She was also accused of providing unauthorized invitation letters from the office of the New York governor, which constituted false statements related to immigration documents, to allow Chinese officials to illegally enter the United States and meet with U.S. government officials.
She allegedly forged Hochul’s signature on these letters. She also allegedly smuggled a Chinese consulate official into a remote NYS government conference in March 2020, used her ties to promote a logistics company owned by her husband’s friend, attended events in China using her official title without authorization, lied to the FBI about the purpose of one of her trips to China, and purported to be the deputy commissioner of the department of labor months after she was fired.
In return for her activities, Sun allegedly received “substantial economic and other benefits” from Beijing’s representatives, including the “facilitation of millions of dollars in transactions” for her husband’s business activities in China, travel benefits, tickets to events, promotion of a close family friend’s business, employment for her cousin in China, and Nanjing-style salted ducks prepared by PRC Official-1’s personal chef that were delivered to Sun’s parents’ home, prosecutors said.
The couple allegedly laundered monetary proceeds to purchase items including their $3.6 million home in New York, a $1.9 million condominium in Hawaii, and various luxury cars, including a 2024 Ferrari.
Stopping NYS–Taiwan Ties
According to the indictment, as early as 2016, Sun began blocking requests from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in New York, a de facto consulate of Taiwan, to meet or call the governors.
She declined or ignored the requests that were sent to her, and persuaded colleagues that not doing so would lead to a diplomatic “firestorm,” the prosecutors alleged.
She allegedly bragged about stopping all meetings between the TECO and the governor in emails to Chinese consulate officials and censored government communications to remove references to Taiwan’s official name, the Republic of China (ROC).
The ROC is the continuation of an exiled power that controlled mainland China before the CCP took over in 1949.
Beijing claims sovereignty over the self-ruled island, while many countries, including the United States, don’t have official diplomatic ties with Taiwan but maintain unofficial ties.
Sun allegedly blocked a TECO invitation for Hochul, then-deputy governor of NYS, to attend an event in Washington during Select USA in June 2016.
Later in the month, Hochul attended the 2016 SelectUSA Reception in Washington hosted by the Chinese embassy and the China General Chamber of Commerce–U.S.A. Her attendance was mentioned in a summary of the event on the embassy website.
On July 5, 2019, the TECO deputy consul wrote to Sun to invite her and Cuomo to attend a banquet in Manhattan during the upcoming visit of then-President of Taiwan Tsai Ing-wen, the indictment said.
Sun allegedly declined the invitation without forwarding it or checking Cuomo’s schedule, alerted a Chinese consulate official about the event, and discussed it with the official. She was also pictured among a crowd protesting Tsai’s visit in Manhattan.
She was also accused of providing an edit to a draft statement by Cuomo to remove references to the “Republic of China” in late August 2019, and editing a press release on COVID-19 travel restrictions which she said “referred to Taiwan as a country.”
In April 2020, Sun allegedly attempted to stonewall a request, which was also copy-sent to two other NYS employees, to facilitate a call between Hochul and the director-general of TECO after the Taiwanese government donated 200,000 masks to the NYS government.
According to the indictment, Sun eventually gave in, but wrote to PRC Official-1 before arranging the call, and assured the official that there would not be formal acknowledgment of the donation.
Other Activities
Sun allegedly secured a video message from Hochul celebrating the Chinese New Year at the request of a Chinese consulate official and had an argument with Hochul’s speech writer who insisted the deputy governor mention the “Uyghur situation” in China, referring to the human rights abuses against the ethnic group.
“In fact, in her public Lunar New Year message for 2021, Politician-2 did not refer to the plight of Uyghurs in the PRC. PRC Official-1 posted Politician-2’s Lunar New Year message to the PRC Consulate Facebook page,” the indictment reads.
Prosecutors also alleged that Sun in March 2020 “surreptitiously” added a Chinese consulate official to a private NYS government conference call about “the health response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the administration’s response to rising hate crimes against Asian Americans,” and repeatedly messaged the official to keep their phone muted.
She also allegedly used her connections to promote a company owned by her husband’s friend, following the owner’s request, and the company “ultimately billed NYS government more than $700,000 for providing logistics services during the Spring and Summer 2020,” the indictment said.
Besides consulate officials, Sun was also accused of helping two other individuals, including a naturalized U.S. citizen and a U.S. legal permanent resident, who were themselves acting as CCP agents, to promote business ties between NYS and the Chinese provinces of Henan and Jiangxi.
According to the indictment, she allegedly provided unauthorized invitations to Chinese delegations from Henan, allowing them to fraudulently obtain U.S. visas, and arranged official meetings.
Sun allegedly went on trips to China, whose expenses were fully or partly paid for by the Chinese regime or CCP agents.
In one such trip in 2019, she was invited to the banquet hall in the Great Hall of the People, and the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, where foreign delegations are entertained and accommodated, to attend celebrations of the CCP’s 70th year in power.
During a voluntary interview with an FBI agent in July 2020, Sun was questioned about the trip and admitted to attending the celebratory event. She said that she was already in China for a family visit and that a real estate developer from Long Island had obtained her a ticket for the event, even though CCP agents arranged and funded the trips, prosecutors alleged.
In a statement emailed to The Epoch Times, Cuomo’s spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said: “National security is critical and must be free from foreign influence. While Ms Sun was promoted to Deputy Chief of Staff in the subsequent administration, during our time she worked in a handful of agencies and was one of many community liaisons who had little to no interaction with the governor.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times