New York’s Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Wednesday that she spoke with the State Department and “conveyed [her] desire” to have a Chinese diplomat that she and her office have met with repeatedly since 2019 “expelled” from his post in New York after he was referenced dozens of times in an indictment against her former top aide.
During an unrelated press conference on Wednesday, Hochul informed the media that she had been on the phone with a high-ranking State Department official at the request of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and revealed that she supported “[Consul General Huang Ping] from the People’s Republic of China and the New York mission [being] expelled, and I’ve been informed that the [consul general] is no longer in the New York mission.”
Hochul’s comments were later contradicted by State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, who said during a press briefing that the “consul general was not expelled” and that Ping “reached the end of a regularly scheduled rotation in August” and rotated out of the position. He added that there was “no expulsive action.”
“Embarrassing stuff from the State Department,” Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow in Indo-Pacific Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, posted on X. “Huang Ping was colluding with elected US officials. Hit Beijing back — hard. Don’t give them a graceful off-ramp.”
Former aide to New York Gov Kathy Hochul, Linda Sun, is accused of buying $6M worth of property in New York, Hawaii with Chinese Communist Party money (Getty Images)
The news about Ping follows Hochul’s former deputy chief of staff, Linda Sun, and her husband, Chris Hu, getting arrested early Tuesday morning and Sun being charged “with violating and conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, visa fraud, alien smuggling, and money laundering conspiracy,” according to a Department of Justice press release sent out later in the morning.
While Hochul’s office released a statement saying they “terminated her employment in March 2023 after discovering evidence of misconduct, immediately reported her actions to law enforcement, and have assisted law enforcement throughout this process,” her ties to Ping, who has repeatedly praised the CCP and was referenced in the unsealed 64-page DOJ indictment dozens of times communicating with Sun, will likely bring more scrutiny.
Ping, who has been the consul general of China’s New York Consulate since 2018 and has repeatedly called the CCP a “great party,” appears to be listed as “PRC Official-1” in the indictment and has repeatedly met with Hochul, who is referred to as “Politician- 2.” Fox News Digital in 2022 was the first media outlet to report on Hochul’s ties to Ping, noting how they met in April 2019 when she was the lieutenant governor to discuss cooperation between New York and China.
The now-deleted photo of Hochul and Ping was part of a press release showing them standing beside each other and smiling while holding a certificate that Hochul presented to him for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
In February 2021, he called her an “old friend” in a Facebook post, featuring a video of her, and has attended other events with her as recently as this year when they both attended New York City’s Lunar New Year event in February. Video from the event shows Ping helping Hochul set off a firecracker.
“I look forward to continuing to strengthen our culture, social, and economic ties in the future,” Hochul said in a November 2021 letter written for an event promoted by Ping in support of U.S.-China relations.
In addition to Hochul’s ties to Ping, his rhetoric is pertinent because the unsealed indictment revealed that Sun was using her government position to influence policy and push the same talking points that were being amplified by Ping and the CCP.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks during a briefing on the new BA.2.86 COVID-19 variant on September 13, 2023 (Getty Images)
Fox News Digital previously reported on Ping’s rhetoric during a podcast that toed the line of the CCP, which included dismissing the Uyghur genocide as “lies,” despite the State Department and Holocaust Museum repeatedly saying China is committing genocide, and denying the independence of Taiwan, saying, “Taiwan and the mainland are from the ‘same family’” and questioned the United States for “meddling in this internal affairs of China.”
The unsealed indictment revealed that a speechwriter for then-Lt. Gov. Hochul wanted to mention the “Uyghur situation,” in China for her 2021 Lunar New Year message, but the plight of the minority group being persecuted by the Chinese government was ultimately omitted after Sun overruled the speechwriter. The indictment says Sun revealed to Ping what the speechwriter wanted to include, but insisted that she would not let her boss mention Uyghurs after admitting that she was “starting to lose her temper” with the speechwriter.
Ping appeared to chalk up the speechwriter’s suggestion as a clueless American who had never visited China and that U.S.-China relations could “sour” because of “people like the speechwriter,” the indictment said, prompting Sun to concur that the speechwriter had never visited China. Ping would go on to post Hochul’s Lunar New Year message days later on his Facebook page, which did not mention Uyghurs.
The indictment also claimed that Sun repeatedly used her government positions in the Cuomo and Hochul administrations to block “representatives of the Taiwanese government” from meeting with high-ranking New York government officials, including Hochul and Cuomo, and would then boast about her actions with Chinese officials, including Ping. In one instance, she texted a Chinese official in the fall of 2020 to say she “almost had a heart attack when we referred to Taiwan as a country” and let the official know that she “had the press team correct it immediately,” according to the indictment.
Huang Ping visits with leadership at Conde Nast on November 1 (Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China in New York)
In another instance, the indictment says Sun informed a Chinese consular official that then-Lt. Gov. Hochul’s office received an invite from Taiwan’s economic office to attend their event for the SelectUSA Summit in Washington, D.C., in 2016 and that they “sent the invitation to another colleague trying to bypass me.” Sun told the official she was working to “resolve the issue.”
Sun would later confirm, “It’s all been taken care of satisfactorily,” and Hochul ended up attending a reception hosted by the Chinese embassy and the China General Chamber of Commerce-USA, a New York City-based group that has been praised by top CCP leaders in Beijing.
According to Chinese state media reports in 2020, Wang Yang, who was described as a “top political advisor” in China and a “member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee,” sent a congratulatory letter to the group.
Hochul did not attend the Taiwan event her office was invited to, according to the indictment.
In return for Sun allegedly acting on behalf of the Chinese government in her government roles, the indictment lists several gifts she and her husband received from Chinese officials, including luxury tickets to concerts and other New York-based events and travel benefits, and Ping gifted Sun’s parents with Nanjing-style salted ducks prepared by his chef. The indictment also listed the “facilitation of millions of dollars in transactions for the PRC-based business activities of Sun’s husband,” which the indictment says was used to purchase real estate property in Manhasset, New York, for $3.6 million, a $1.9 million condo in Honolulu, and other luxury purchases, including a 2024 Ferrari.
FBI Acting Assistant Director Christine Curtis slammed Sun in a statement that was issued as part of the DOJ press release on Tuesday, saying she “wielded her position of influence among executives to covertly promote PRC and CCP agendas, directly threatening our country’s national security.”
“The FBI is committed to protect the American people from any threat actors who seek to influence officials at the direction of foreign entities,” she added.
While Hochul’s office has distanced itself from Sun and downplayed her as a “mid-level employee” in her administration during Wednesday’s press conference, the former deputy chief of staff got a shoutout from the Democratic governor during a 2021 speech while touting the “diversity” of her staff and boasting about how she “promised” to “bring the most qualified individuals and open up the doors so state government looks more like the people of the State of New York.”
CHINESE OFFICIAL WHO PRAISED CCP, DENIED UYGHUR GENOCIDE VISITS WITH THREE MORE TOP UNIVERSITIES
Former New York Governor Kathy Hochul aide Linda Sun, center, and her husband, Christopher Hu, second from left, leave Brooklyn Federal Court after their arraignment, Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Corey Sipkin)
“We’ve accomplished that literally in a matter of two months, and I want to thank someone who’s starting her job and a very important job,” Hochul said. “As well as others on my team who are represented here. Linda Sun is here. Linda Sun, where are you, Linda Sun?”
Sun, who was reportedly in the roomfor nearly two dozen publicly disclosed meetings with Hochul between August 2021 and May 2022, previously served as a “chief diversity officer” during the latter years of the Cuomo administration, said in an unearthed clip from the early months of the Hochul administration, “When people say diversity and inclusion, I think everybody agrees, or most people generally agree, that it’s a good thing.”
“But I think right now we also need to bring in the word equity,” she added.
The official added that equity was “one way to make sure that all of the people who are at the table have equal access to making sure that their ideas and their thoughts are heard.”
“And unfortunately… we don’t have that much leadership or representation of Asian Americans in, you know, the corporate world, the government field,” Sun added.
Later in the webinar, Sun seemed to reference a 2018 executive order signed by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo that made “diversity and inclusion and equity a top priority.”
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Sun’s attorney Jarrod Schaeffer previously told Fox News Digital that he and Sun are “troubled by aspects of the government’s investigation.”
“We are disappointed by the filing of these charges, which are inflammatory and appear to be the product of an overly aggressive prosecution,” Schaeffer said. “As we said today in court, our client is eager to exercise her right to a speedy trial and to defend against these accusations in the proper forum — a court of law.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Hochul’s office and the Chinese consulate in New York.
Fox News’ Andrea Vacchiano contributed to this report.