Trial of former Hochul-Cuomo staffer accused of being Chinese agent ends in mistrial

BROOKLYN (CN) — The case of Linda Sun, a former high-ranking aide for New York governors Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul, ended in a mistrial Monday after federal jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict on whether she facilitated a Chinese influence scheme in Albany.

The jurors’ troubles became palpable last week when they sent a note to the court that they were deadlocked.

“We deeply feel that no progress can be made to change any jurors’ judgment on all counts,” the panel wrote on the fourth day of deliberations. “There are fundamental differences on the evidence and the interpretation of the law.”

U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan, a George W. Bush appointee in Brooklyn, read the jurors an Allen charge and encouraged them to resume deliberating.

But after the jury started deliberations Monday morning with an alternate juror, they sent a note to Cogan in the afternoon saying they remained hopelessly deadlocked on all 19 counts. So Cogan declared a mistrial, though federal prosecutors indicated they intend to retry the case as soon as possible.

Sun and her husband, Chris Hu, were charged with 19 counts related to the purported plot to sell out New Yorkers in exchange for bribes and benefits from Chinese officials. Prosecutors said Sun used her job in state government to perform favors for Beijing by influencing actions of the New York government.

“Public servants are meant to serve the public, not themselves,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Shami said at the trial’s opening. “Her loyalty was for sale.”

In one instance, Sun was accused of cutting language out of a state press release that referred to Taiwan as a country. In another, she boasted about blocking then-Governor Cuomo’s access to the Taiwanese president.

Sun also sparred with Cuomo’s speechwriter about whether or not the governor should bring up China’s treatment of the Uyghurs — a minority group that has been subjected to human rights abuses by the Chinese government for the past decade — in a video for the Chinese consulate.

“Our speechwriter insisted on mentioning the Uyghur situation in China,” Sun said in a text message to the consulate’s New York head in 2021. “I am going to collapse. I will think of a solution tomorrow, but I will definitely not let the governor bring this up.”

Other text messages revealed to the Brooklyn jury showed Sun refer to then-Lieutenant Governor Hochul as “obedient” after getting her to shoot a Lunar New Year video for the consulate.

“The deputy governor listens to me more than the governor does,” Sun said to Consul General Huang Ping in a 2021 text message, punctuated by a smiley face emoji.

Throughout the roughly three-week trial, prosecutors peppered the jury with pictures of Sun’s supposed spoils: a white Ferrari, designer handbags and gaudy homes in Long Island and New York — all of which they claimed were funded, in one way or another, by Sun’s work for China.

The government claimed Sun even made direct requests for certain gifts, like Nanjing-style salted ducks prepared by the consul general’s personal chef. She texted Ping in 2021: “I want to eat salted duck.”

“Sometimes, she wanted enough duck to feed her family for Thanksgiving,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Solomon said during the trial’s closings.

Sun’s defense attorney Kenneth Abell lambasted the notion during his own closing argument.

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

Sun and Hu were also charged with directing state contracts for personal protective equipment to Chinese companies with family ties at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Prosecutors said the couple later received millions of dollars in kickbacks.

According to Sun’s lawyers, however, the career public servant was merely doing her job. They argued at trial that Sun was ultimately successful in securing coveted Covid-19 supplies when New Yorkers needed them most. And many of the government’s other charges can be chalked up to Sun advising the governor’s office on how to boost relations with the Asian American community, which was precisely her role, her lawyers claimed.

“Linda Sun did what she was hired to do,” Sun’s attorney Jarrod Schaeffer told the jury in November. “For more than a decade, on behalf of New Yorkers, she worked for the state.”

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

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