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BROOKLYN (CN) — Prosecutors on Wednesday said Linda Sun, a former high-ranking aide in New York’s government, sold out the state to reap millions in gifts and benefits from Beijing.
Sun, 42, is accused of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act during her work under former Governor Andrew Cuomo and current Governor Kathy Hochul in a case involving a supposedly sprawling influence campaign from the Chinese government in the Empire State. Her trial opened on Wednesday in the Eastern District of New York, where prosecutors claimed that Sun “betrayed the state of New York to enrich herself.”
“Public servants are meant to serve the public, not themselves,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Shami. “Her loyalty was for sale.”
Prosecutors say Sun, who joined the Cuomo administration in 2012, facilitated communications between New York state officers and the Chinese government, organized Chinese officials’ visits to the United States and blocked representatives of the Taiwanese government from access to high-level New York officials.
Sun is also accused of covertly adding a Chinese government official to a private call concerning New York’s public health response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and altering a state press release by cutting language that referred to Taiwan as a country.
“She did things that the Chinese government wanted her to do,” Shami said.
In exchange for her efforts, prosecutors say Sun received properties in Long Island and Hawaii, a 2024 Ferrari Roma, tickets to events and even Nanjing-style salted ducks prepared by a Chinese government official’s personal chef.
Sun is being tried alongside her husband, Chris Hu, who prosecutors claim kept his seafood company afloat with Sun’s favors for China, and laundered some of her purported kickbacks.
But the couple’s defense attorneys painted a very different picture of the conduct on Wednesday. In their view, Sun was merely doing her job by advising the governor’s office to avoid hot-button issues like Taiwan. She was tasked with being a liaison between the governor and Chinese Americans, they claim, which was precisely what she did.
“Linda Sun did what she was hired to do,” Sun’s defense attorney Jarrod Schaeffer told the jury. “For more than a decade, on behalf of New Yorkers, she worked for the state.”
Schaeffer acknowledged that Sun may have gotten gifts and benefits on occasion, but that these are “a common cultural and political practice” in China and that the Chinese government did the same for other officials.
“You’ll see that the governor got gifts and benefits,” he told the jury.
Sun and Hu are also accused of steering government contracts to companies with ties to their family during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to reports, New York was billed more than $700,000 by a company with ties to Sun’s husband that sent ventilators to the U.S. during the pandemic. Sun’s second cousin ran another scrutinized vendor — prosecutors say Sun falsified a document to suggest that vendor was recommended by Chinese officials.
But Schaeffer claimed that this was another example of Sun doing what she was hired to do.
“She was working around the clock for fellow New Yorkers,” Schaeffer argued. “She helped New Yorkers locate millions of dollars of PPE.”
Sun and Hu face a monthlong trial for charges including violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, visa fraud, bank fraud and money laundering. Most of Sun’s charged conduct occurred while she worked in Cuomo’s administration. But after Cuomo resigned in 2021, Sun worked under Governor Kathy Hochul, rising to her deputy chief of staff.
Sun later moved to the state’s Department of Labor until she was fired in 2023.
Sun and Hu have pleaded not guilty to all charges against them. Sun is out on a $1.5 million bond, while Hu is out on a $500,000 bond.
The government called three witnesses on Wednesday, including Hochul’s former chief of staff Jeffrey Lewis, who testified that he was the one who promoted Sun to be his deputy in 2021. Lewis said he chose her because of her long experience working in government and noted that “she worked really hard; she came highly recommended.” He’ll continue testifying on Thursday.
Senior U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan is presiding over the trial. The George W. Bush appointee previously oversaw the case of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
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