Months after a low-level aide in the administration of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo returned from a visit to China in 2019, she got a curious inquiry from federal investigators.
The F.B.I. wanted to know about the nature of the trip that the aide, Linda Sun, had taken.
The interaction in 2020 was one of the first known instances of governmental interest in Ms. Sun’s activities, according to a federal indictment unsealed on Tuesday. But it was not the last.
In February 2023, Ms. Sun was interviewed by the state’s Office of the Inspector General about her unauthorized procurement of official proclamations from the governor’s office, according to a federal indictment unsealed on Tuesday.
And when Ms. Sun was fired by Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration weeks later, state officials’ suspicions surrounding Ms. Sun were “reported immediately to law enforcement,” the governor said on Wednesday.
Before her dismissal, even as questions were repeatedly raised, Ms. Sun continued to use her positions in state government to benefit the People’s Republic of China and its Community Party in exchange for millions of dollars in benefits, according to prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn.
In a 65-page indictment, prosecutors laid out a yearslong scheme in which Ms. Sun blocked Taiwanese officials from having access to the governor’s office, eliminated references to Taiwan and Uyghurs from state communications and quashed meetings with Taiwanese officials, all in an effort to bolster Chinese government positions.
In return, Ms. Sun, 40, and her husband, Chris Hu, 41, were accused of receiving payoffs that included millions of dollars in transactions with China-based businesses tied to Mr. Hu. They also included travel benefits, tickets to events, a series of Nanjing-style salted ducks prepared by a Chinese consulate official’s private chef and employment for Ms. Sun’s cousin in China, prosecutors said.
Ms. Sun, 40, was charged with 10 criminal counts that included visa fraud, money laundering and other crimes. Her husband was charged with money laundering. Both pleaded not guilty in federal court on Tuesday, were released on bond and were required to surrender their passports.
In interviews, officials and people who worked with her at varying stages of her career offered differing impressions of Ms. Sun. Some saw her as a quiet but knowledgeable employee who made a name for herself as a political operator in New York City’s Asian American community and in the Democratic circles of power in Queens, where she appeared to have gotten her start.
But to the Chinese government, someone of Ms. Sun’s stature would have been seen as a logical and desirable target to win over, according to James Lewis, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who studies Chinese espionage abroad.
Ms. Sun’s alleged behavior fit into a common tactic of attempting to buy influence in countries including Canada, Australia or the United States.
The charges are the latest in the effort by the Justice Department to stop efforts by the Chinese government to wield its influence secretly across the United States. In another recent case, Shujun Wang, 75, a Queens man who billed himself as a democracy activist and scholar, was convicted last month in Brooklyn federal court of acting as a spy for the Chinese Communist Party.
Mr. Lewis said that the expense of these operations would have been a pittance for China. Ms. Sun may have been a midlevel aide, but to diplomats reporting back to Beijing, he said, “it’s a big coup to recruit the deputy chief of staff.”
“She was a good get,” Mr. Lewis said. “If the C.I.A. had recruited the Chinese equivalent, officials in Beijing would have flipped out, and we would have seen it as a success.”
Ms. Sun entered the political world when she worked as Representative Grace Meng’s chief of staff when Ms. Meng represented a Queens district in the State Assembly. She became known for fiercely defending her boss in the district, and later worked on Ms. Meng’s successful campaign for Congress in 2012, which made her the state’s first Asian American elected to the House.
Following her stint with Ms. Meng, she went to work for Mr. Cuomo’s administration — at one point holding a deputy chief position in the diversity office and becoming a co-director of the governor’s Asian American Advisory Council, according to prosecutors. After taking office, Ms. Hochul promoted Ms. Sun to deputy chief of staff.
Ms. Sun’s job of liaison to the Asian American community was demanding, requiring her to attend community meetings late into the night, and Ms. Sun was tireless, according to her former colleagues.
But some officials who had more frequent interactions with Ms. Sun said they began to notice a change as her role in state government grew.
One state lawmaker and one former state lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that during the time Ms. Sun served under Mr. Cuomo, the governor’s office appeared notably sensitive to issues related to Taiwan. The governor’s office expressed resistance and pushed back against symbolic pro-Taiwan resolutions that were regularly introduced in the State Legislature, according to one of the lawmakers.
The lawmaker also said Ms. Sun and her husband were a regular presence at events and fund-raisers organized by mainland Chinese groups in Queens and Albany, and led a more extravagant lifestyle than most in her position.
Her trip in 2019 to China included a reception in Beijing to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China in Beijing. Prosecutors now say the trip was orchestrated by a Chinese government official, who also paid for Ms. Sun’s hotel accommodations.
And as New York became the epicenter of the emerging Covid crisis, Ms. Sun was one of the few members of the governor’s senior staff with Mandarin language skills and relationships across the Pacific. She became part of an ad hoc team dedicated to securing PPE and other supplies from China.
In January 2020, Ms. Sun wrote to a Chinese government official to “provide an update on PPE donated by members of a U.S.-based Chinese overseas association to Wuhan,” according to the indictment, and told the official that a company that she said her husband owned would “provide free shipping services for shipments to epidemic areas and offered to provide free shipping services for other Chinese overseas associations.” The company actually belonged to a friend of Ms. Sun and her husband.
In reference to the same donation, a Chinese government official sent Ms. Sun a link to a media statement from the government, which referenced the company, and wrote “please say thank you to your husband and his company.”
Still, her influence was limited. She was never in charge of lucrative state contracts or procurement decisions.
Beyond her official duties, some who spoke to The New York Times were puzzled by aspects of Ms. Sun’s personal life.
For years she had lived in Linden Towers, a middle-class co-op in Flushing, Queens. Several people who worked with her said they were left with the impression her husband was unemployed, and Ms. Sun frequently told superiors she needed a raise, according to two people familiar with the requests who were granted anonymity to discuss personnel matters.
At the same time, she often arrived at a state office building in Midtown Manhattan, where she had an office just below the governor’s, dressed in designer outfits.
“I do remember her being a little more polished than other government employees,” said Brandon Hicks, who worked closely with Ms. Sun when he was Mr. Cuomo’s director of African American affairs. “The way she dressed. The bags she carried. She seemed like she must have a husband with a good outside job.”
After Mr. Cuomo’s resignation, there was a scramble to fill senior staff positions, and Ms. Sun was brought in by Jeff Lewis, who was serving as Ms. Hochul’s chief of staff. Several officials said that Ms. Sun’s role was mostly confined to facilitating events, and that senior administration officials soon decided that she should be reassigned.
She moved to the Department of Labor and left state government in 2023.
Mr. Lewis did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Ms. Hochul expressed her anger over the charges. “I’m outraged by this behavior,” she said. “She used that position to deteriorate the trust as outlined in the indictment.”
The governor disclosed that she had asked a State Department official to expel China’s consul general during a phone call set up by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
She said she was “informed that the consul general is no longer in the New York mission.” Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, said at a news briefing on Wednesday that the consul general had not been expelled but had left the consulate because his rotation had ended.
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