Last week, federal prosecutors launched a bombshell indictment against sitting New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Among a range of charges, Adams is accused of covertly funneling foreign funding, primarily out of Turkey, into his election campaigns. He then allegedly pushed pro-Turkish policies while in office—making him, for all intents and purposes, an effective foreign agent on behalf of the Turkish government.
The indictment is shocking for a range of reasons, and joins a burst of other indictments recently filed in the foreign lobbying space. But while most of the recent revelations have centered on illicit lobbying networks in Washington, the Adams indictment points in the opposite direction: to the fact that foreign regimes are no longer targeting just officials in Washington, but local officials around the U.S. as well.
Indeed, the Adams charges follow directly on the heels of another recent indictment that highlights this new—and potentially even more concerning—paradigm in the world of foreign lobbying efforts. As prosecutors alleged last month, an American named Linda Sun secretly acted as an agent for the Chinese government, helping Beijing spread its influence efforts to new U.S. audiences.
The many duties that Sun allegedly performed included blocking Taiwanese representatives from meeting with American officials, forging signatures to issue official proclamations celebrating Chinese representatives, and even blocking at least one U.S. official from mentioning China’s crimes against Uyghurs, which the United States has labeled as genocidal. In return, she and her husband allegedly received millions of dollars, tickets to elite events, and even “Nanjing-style salted ducks” prepared by the personal chef of a Chinese officials.
But Sun’s pro-Beijing work didn’t take place in Washington. Rather, it took place in Albany, New York—and occurred while Sun worked as the top aide to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. That is, Sun’s Chinese handlers didn’t want her targeting federal officials, but instead targeting the kinds of state-level officials and legislators who’ve long escaped foreign lobbying scrutiny.
Now, with Sun’s indictment—and for the first time in U.S. history—we’ve gained insight into how and why foreign regimes target state-level governments, and how they attempt to influence state-level officials in the United States. It is a watershed moment—and one that, given the paucity of attention paid to the topic previously, is almost certainly an indicator of a far bigger, far broader problem.
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