Former aide Linda Sun, who worked for New York State for about 15 years, first under Andrew Cuomo and then as Kathy Hochul’s deputy chief of staff, was arrested on September 3 with her husband at their $4 million Long Island home. Prosecutors accuse her of blocking Taiwanese government officials from accessing high-level New York State officials and altering official messages to favor China’s political agenda, among other things. “While appearing to serve the people of New York, the defendant and her husband were actually working to advance the interests of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party,” said federal prosecutor Breon Peace after the arrest.
Sun is a naturalized U.S. citizen (born in China) and has pleaded not guilty along with her husband Chris Hu. They will be released on bail, but are prohibited from contacting the People’s Republic of China’s consulate and diplomatic mission in the United States. Her defense attorney, Jarrod Schaeffer, said his client is “understandably dismayed” by the charges against her, and that they will contest them in court once the trial begins.
The gifts received by the former advisor
Linda Sun’s lavish lifestyle was one of the clues that led to the investigation into her actions as governor of New York State. Federal prosecutor Breon Peace said that “the illicit scheme enriched the defendant’s family by several million dollars.” The justice authorities traced a series of gifts and benefits received that suggest the links between the defendants, the Chinese government and their associates.
The gifts ranged from Nanjing-style salted ducks prepared by a PRC official’s personal chef and delivered to Sun’s parents’ home in New York between 2021 and 2022; tickets to various artistic events, such as the National Traditional Chinese Orchestra’s concert at Carnegie Hall; to expensive trips such as the one the former adviser, her husband and his business partner took in 2017 as guests of the president of an anonymous association from the province of Henan, based in the Big Apple. On that trip, her husband received help for his business activities in China (he is a lobster exporter from Queens), which eventually generated enough income for the couple to buy their million-dollar residence in Manhasset, New York; another in Hawaii, worth $1.9 million; and a Ferrari in 2024, according to the indictment.
Records also indicate that on another official trip to Jiangsu Province, China, Sun received “undisclosed and unapproved” benefits from local officials, according to prosecutors. In addition, a bank account belonging to the former adviser and her spouse received a transfer of $47,895 from China in 2016, dubbed “travel payment.” The plot of the case thickens and spreads.
The entire investigation is framed by the growing tensions between the United States and China. In testimony before Congress last year, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the agency had opened “thousands of investigations” into Chinese espionage in the country. And the CIA has done its part, too. In a speech in 2023, the director of that agency, William Burns, indicated that spending on countering Chinese intelligence activities had more than doubled. With this strengthening of counterintelligence actions, but also because of greater Chinese activity, more and more low-level informants are being investigated. For the FBI, the profile of the informant does not matter: “espionage is espionage,” and any capture is a victory.
On the Chinese side, if confirmed, the case is not an anomaly, but rather demonstrates to some extent one of the modus operandi from their intelligence services. As they have expanded their network of informants, one of the most effective techniques has been to seek out people who were born and raised in China, and who now live and have American citizenship. Once identified, they recruit them in different ways: offering them money, appealing to their national pride, indulging their vanities or even threatening their families in China. As a result, some informants are sincere believers, others are ordinary people who have found themselves in the middle of an international espionage plot.
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