‘There’s no smoking gun:’ Defense makes last stand in case of accused Chinese agent

BROOKLYN (CN) — Linda Sun may not have been the perfect public servant, but the former high-ranking aide for New York Governors Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul is far from the hardened criminal mastermind prosecutors are making her out to be, according to her lawyers.

“Linda Sun is a proud American and lifetime New Yorker who was well-regarded by her peers,” defense attorney Kenneth Abell told a pack of federal jurors in Brooklyn on Wednesday. “Did she do everything perfectly? Absolutely not.”

“But she did not commit any crimes,” Abell said.

Sun is trying to thwart charges that she cashed out on her position as a New York state official to fund a gaudy lifestyle of luxury cars, expensive properties, designer handbags — even Nanjing-style salted ducks — by secretly working for the Chinese government.

“I want to eat salted duck,” Sun said in a 2021 text to the head of the Chinese consulate in New York, adding with a licking-lips emoji, “I eat it as a midnight snack.”

Abell lambasted the government on Wednesday for seemingly making the ducks a “centerpiece” of its case against the accused Chinese agent.

“To say that Linda did what the government said she did for salted ducks is as absurd as it sounds,” the lawyer quipped.

It was the defense’s last shot to duck the accusations before the jury is handed the case later this week. Handling closings on behalf of Sun, Abell accused prosecutors of asking the jurors to make “huge jumps” in order to convict his client on violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and a litany of other charges.

“There’s no smoking gun,” Abell said, critiquing the government for not eliciting testimony from a co-conspirator or someone with explicit knowledge of the supposed Chinese influence scheme.

Throughout the roughly three-week trial, the government presented texts and witness testimony that purportedly showed Sun performing favors on behalf of Beijing during her time as a public servant in New York.

Among those favors — according to prosecutors — was forging then-Lieutenant Governor Hochul’s signatures on invitation letters to sneak Chinese officials into the U.S., covertly adding a Chinese consulate official to a call about New York’s Covid-19 response, blocking Taiwanese access to New York officials and getting an “obedient” Hochul to star in a Lunar New Year video for the consulate.

She’s also accused of getting millions of dollars in kickbacks on state contracts for personal protective equipment, which she supposedly directed to Chinese companies with family ties during the height of the 2020 pandemic.

According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Solomon, who gave his closing remarks on Tuesday, Sun “betrayed the state of New York.”

But Abell painted a different story, claiming that convicting Sun would require jurors to make connections in the evidence that the government’s own witnesses didn’t make.

“The theory seems to be that money and China and state government is an enticing mix,” Abell said. “There was no evidence linking money to specific crimes.”

The defense attorney also lobbed attacks at the government for focusing on Sun’s wealth. Throughout the trial, the government peppered jurors with photographs of Sun’s 2024 Ferrari Roma, her Hermes handbags and her multimillion-dollar homes in Hawaii and Long Island.

“It’s not illegal to have money,” Abell said. “It’s not illegal to spend it.”

Sun is charged alongside her husband, Chris Hu, who is accused of keeping his flailing lobster-exporting business afloat with Sun’s purported Chinese favors. Prosecutors also say he led the charge to launder kickbacks from the Covid-19 scheme, referring to cash as “apples” in messages in an attempt to cover his tracks.

Hu’s team has argued there’s no proof that the success of his seafood company was a result of his wife. And of the supposed Covid-19 kickbacks, Hu’s attorney said those claims are illogical given how desperate state governments were for personal protective equipment at the time.

“Why would someone bribe to get a contract that was there for the taking?” Hu’s lawyer Nicole Boeckmann told the jury on Wednesday.

Sun and Hu face a 19-count indictment containing charges including visa fraud, bank fraud, money laundering and conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. If convicted, the couple could face serious prison time.

Hired under the Cuomo administration in 2012, Sun rose the ranks in Albany to eventually serve as the governor’s deputy chief of staff under Hochul. She was eventually moved to the state’s labor department, where she was fired in 2023 for misconduct revealed by an internal probe.

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