Stefanik Urges Probe into Hochul after Feds Bring Chinese Foreign-Agent Charges against Former Staffer

Representative Elise Stefanik called for a probe into New York governor Kathy Hochul and her administration after the Justice Department indicted the governor’s former deputy chief of staff on Tuesday for allegedly working as an agent of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party.

Linda Sun, a former staffer for Hochul and former governor Andrew Cuomo, was arrested today with her husband, Chris Hu. The charges relate to her work as an unregistered foreign agent for the Chinese government and money-laundering that Hu allegedly engaged in to hide the proceeds of Sun’s efforts.

Until today’s arrests, few members of Congress had commented on some New York government officials’ apparent ties to China’s consulate general in Manhattan and pro-Beijing community organizations. Stefanik (R., N.Y.) is the first to call for an investigation into Hochul and her administration.

“Failed Far Left Democrat Kathy Hochul allowed Communist Chinese spy Linda Sun unfettered access to the highest levels of New York State government,” Stefanik said in a statement to National Review this afternoon.

“From allowing Chinese police stations, to maintaining a sister city partnership between NYC and Beijing, this is another example of New York Democrats facilitating the influence campaign of Communist China. I am calling for a complete investigation into Kathy Hochul and her administration so that hardworking New York taxpayers receive the transparency we deserve.”

In court documents, the federal government does not accuse Hochul of any wrongdoing and outlines Sun’s efforts to deceive her former colleagues in New York State government about her coordination with the Chinese government.

But the New York governor’s apparent coziness with Chinese consul general Huang Ping, and the China General Chamber of Commerce USA business lobby group, had prompted media scrutiny of her activities long before Sun’s conduct was brought to the attention of the New York State office of the inspector general in 2023.

Hochul waved a Chinese flag at a Lunar New Year parade that featured pro-Beijing community organizations in New York City last year, marching with Huang.

The indictment details Sun’s extensive work to shape New York gubernatorial communications in favor of China’s narratives and to block Taiwanese officials from meeting state officials while coordinating meetings with Chinese government officials. She climbed the rungs of New York State government starting in 2012, eventually reaching the deputy chief role, then, in 2022, that of deputy commissioner of New York’s department of labor.

It also details her extensive ties to the CCP’s united-front influence apparatus, a sprawling system of official party bureaus and unofficial community organizations that do Beijing’s bidding. She held a title within the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, one official organ of the United Front Work Department.

Revelations last year about the Chinese ministry of public security’s operation of an illegal secret police station in downtown Manhattan spurred a burst of activity surrounding Beijing’s influence operations in New York. Then-representative Mike Gallagher, the former chairman of the House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party, led a protest in front of the Chinatown facility in February of 2023.

But since two men were arrested in relation to the illegal outpost last year, congressional discussion about specific manifestations of China’s influence operations has remained minimal.

Reports regarding unusual interactions between the administration of New York City mayor Eric Adams and Chinese party-state entities have gone largely overlooked.

Most lawmakers have not commented on reports that Representative Judy Chu had been given honorary leadership roles within California-based groups that report to united-front organs. She has denied that she held such titles and called the reports racist, though she has not explained Chinese-language media reports and images from events she attended involving those groups.