The more we learn about the case, the harder to believe that any evidence contradicting the substance of the U.S. government’s indictment of Linda Sun, Governor Hochul’s former deputy chief of staff, for acting as an agent of the Chinese government will come to light.
The federal government does issue bad indictments—the ramshackle partisan targeting of a certain former president comes to mind—but the indictment of Sun doesn’t seem like such a one.
The editors of National Review have published a good summary of the case and its implications. They comment on the guilt of Sun and the guilt of the denizens of political establishments who allow such things to transpire for so long right under their noses.
The 64-page indictment charges Sun with crimes relating to her work as an unregistered foreign agent….
The degree to which Sun succeeded in her aims is shocking.
In court documents, the FBI and Justice Department described a sweeping, years-long campaign in which Sun acted under the direction of the Chinese consulate general and components of the CCP’s vast political-influence ecosystem, called the united front.
For years, Sun manipulated Hochul and, before that, former governor Andrew Cuomo, into toeing Beijing’s line in Albany….
Working hand in glove with unnamed Chinese diplomats in Manhattan, she succeeded in blocking Taiwan from forging ties with New York State, preventing Hochul from speaking out about the Uyghur genocide, and inducing Cuomo to say glowing things about China’s consulate during the Covid crisis….
But the two governors made themselves easy marks. Beijing’s malign intentions, and its extensive political-influence schemes, were public knowledge.
Still, Hochul saw fit to repeatedly participate in events with the China General Chamber of Commerce USA, an industry group for Chinese state-owned firms.
It would be nice to suppose that the arrest of Linda Sun and her husband Chris Hu is the straw that breaks the camel’s back, that all president’s offices, governor’s offices, county executive’s offices, mayor’s offices, and dogcatcher’s offices throughout the land will now take a long hard look at their interactions with and enabling of the propagandistic and other aims of Chinese Communist Party influence operators. Such an examination might even unmask other paid agents of China.
The fact that another governor, the authoritarian Tim Walz, was not forced to slink off the presidential-campaign stage in shame, trailing his own slime, as soon as details of his own association and hobnobbing with CCP underlings came to light suggests how unrealistic is such a hope. But maybe we’ll see a start.
Also see:
StopTheChinazis.org: “Tim Walz, the Communist Anticommunist”
