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The Lavish Lifestyle of an Alleged Chinese Agent Gets a Spotlight in Trial
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Linda Sun, a former New York state aide, is on trial for allegedly acting as an undeclared agent for China, facing charges including bribery, bank fraud, and money laundering.
Prosecutors allege Sun used her position to influence New York governors in favor of China, receiving millions through her husband’s businesses, including $15.8 million from a lobster-export business and $2.3 million in COVID-era kickbacks.
Sun’s defense argues her interactions with Chinese officials were part of her official duties and aligned with U.S. policy, with her trial highlighting the complexities of foreign agent prosecutions.
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- Linda Sun, a former New York state aide, is on trial for allegedly acting as an undeclared agent for China, facing charges including bribery, bank fraud, and money laundering.
Working as a New York state aide, Linda Sun and her husband had a late-model Ferrari and paid cash for a $3.6 million Long Island mansion and a $1.9 million condo in Hawaii. How did she manage this on a government salary that never exceeded $145,000?
The answer, federal prosecutors allege in a trial that began Monday, is that Sun acted as an undeclared agent for China who compelled two New York governors to take actions favorable to China in coordination with its consul general and others supportive of Beijing. Sun’s payoff, prosecutors say, was millions of dollars in side deals arranged with the help of Chinese officials primarily through her husband’s businesses. All of it supported a lavish lifestyle, including a steady diet of the Chinese consulate chef’s salted duck dinners.
Sun, 41 years old, denied wrongdoing in a case that entered jury selection Monday in Brooklyn for a federal trial scheduled to last until mid-December. Her defense team plans to argue that meeting Chinese officials was part of her official duties and that her advice to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and current Gov. Kathy Hochul aligned with U.S. policy.
Sun’s trial is perhaps the most prominent recent example of a U.S. prosecution of an alleged agent for China. The case dates to the Biden administration, which framed China as America’s leading global adversary. It comes as the Trump administration sends mixed signals about its willingness to pursue allegations of foreign-agent influence in the U.S.
Sun is charged with being an unregistered foreign agent for China, as well bribery, bank fraud, money laundering, tax evasion and other offenses. Her husband Chris Hu, who turns 43 later in November and faces a subset of the charges, has pleaded not guilty.
The Justice Department declined to comment. China’s embassy didn’t respond to questions.
The government’s case stops short of calling Sun a spy. Instead, the allegations speak to a “betrayal of the public” that will spice up the charges for a jury, said Matthew T. Sanderson, a lawyer in Washington at Caplin & Drysdale. A case related to China, he said, inherently carries a political dimension.
“It has a lot to do with who we view as acting adversarially in the United States,” said Sanderson, who isn’t involved in the case.
Based partly on classified court filings, the Sun case comes with built-in sensationalism: a former beauty-pageant contestant who spent close to a decade working alongside two of America’s most visible politicians and had longstanding ties to others, including U.S. Rep. Grace Meng (D., N.Y.). It is unclear whether any of the politicians, who aren’t accused of wrongdoing and expressed dismay at the accusations against Sun, might be called to testify.
In one instance, prosecutors say, Sun secretly gave a Chinese diplomat access to a state conference call. Separately, their indictment alleged she worked to ensure remarks from the New York politicians reflected Beijing’s interests, such as avoiding criticism of its treatment of ethnic Uyghurs and steering clear of thanking Taiwan or meeting its delegations.
The government alleges Chinese officials pulled strings in return, such as enriching her husband’s lobster-export business, which they said pulled $15.8 million into the U.S. The couple is also accused of profiting on personal-protection equipment imports through a vendor Sun helped line up as a supplier to the state, generating Covid-era kickbacks of $2.3 million.
The government says Hu moved undeclared cash back to the U.S. from his earnings in China using family members and his businesses, including a wine shop in Flushing, N.Y. These funds, prosecutors say, paid for their Long Island home and the 47th-floor Honolulu apartment in 2021, and later a 2024 Ferrari Roma and a 2024 Range Rover.
In 2021, the year public records show Sun earned $144,635 from her job in the state’s executive chamber and, combined with losses reported through her husband’s primary businesses, the couple told the Internal Revenue Service they lost $3,921 in the year. The indictment shows their biggest gain reported to the IRS in recent years was $124,326 for 2023.
Despite her state jobs, Sun made frequent visits to China and appeared to circulate among Chinese Communist Party insiders. The indictment includes a photo of Sun celebrating the party’s 70th year in power in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
Yet the government confronts the tricky challenge of proving that Sun acted in concert with her Chinese contacts and profited, rather than promoted her personal views. Muddying the waters is that some of Sun’s alleged actions—namely limiting interaction between state politicians and Taiwanese officials—aligned with U.S. policy.
The law on registering as an agent for another country is designed to make it transparent “who is doing what for whom,” said Tessa Capeloto, a partner at Washington law firm Wiley Rein who isn’t involved in the case. She added, “It doesn’t need to be something nefarious.”
Unlike many past U.S. prosecutions related to China, the government hasn’t accused Sun of espionage. U.S. District Judge Brian M. Cogan has warned prosecutors that references to spying or espionage “would be inflammatory and unfairly prejudicial.”
Sun had no reason to register as a foreign agent, her defense team argued in pretrial motions. Her conduct “aligned with [U.S.] national objectives cannot credibly be characterized as advancing ‘predominantly a foreign interest,” the defense said in court filings.
China influence cases have been rare under the second Trump presidency. Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded the Justice Department’s Foreign Influence Task Force and ordered that enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act—the statute used to prosecute Sun—be limited to “conduct similar to more traditional espionage.”
Trump on Friday pardoned a former New York City police officer convicted of acting as a Chinese agent by trying to compel a man wanted by Beijing to return to the country.
However, Trump put fresh emphasis on FARA in a September order that directed a National Joint Terrorism Task Force to look into foreign influence networks. Sanderson said the president’s directive suggests “FARA cases will be a priority. I don’t know if they will be China-related.”
Write to James T. Areddy at James.Areddy@wsj.com
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