Ex-aide to NY Governor charged with acting as Chinese agent | The World

well yon uh good morning here from an arburn good evening to you so Linda son was formerly a political Aid in the Democratic or in Democratic circles in uh New York state to include I believe uh serving time with uh the current governor Kathy hokel and previously with uh Andrew Cuomo when he was governor so this is someone who had um risen to the Inner Circle of democratic politics in New York State and the fact that she's now been charged by the Department of Justice and arrested uh by the FBI and facing all the she and her husband facing all these charges in the indictment that's a pretty shocking development how was her alleged work for the Chinese government discovered and what formal charges have been laid so that investigation into her appears to have been going on for several years and I'm sure there were a variety of different uh methods and Tech techniques that were used to to build the the case against uh Linda sun and her husband it appears that a lot of this is based on or a lot of the investigation is based on the financial transactions that she and her husband were involved in and based on what's revealed in the indictment an enormous amount or they both received an enormous amount of money and then used all these uh clever Financial schemes to sort of try to cover their trails and purchase properties and um and cars and and and do all these things you're not supposed to do when you're in public service and then even if you left public service and you're working on behalf of a foreign government you have to declare that under the law that they were charged under and that's that's what they didn't do they never declare themselves as agents of the of the Chinese government can you tell us a bit more about the lavish lifestyle they LED and will all of this be used as evidence against her well from what's come out is that she and her husband owned a $4.4 million House in Long Island which um most people who work in public service cannot afford I say that as a former government employee uh myself and then they had a separate uh multi-million dollar condominium and Honolulu the husband apparently bought um very brand new luxury Vehicles so these are all red flags for uh if you're building an investigation or to say how is a person who is only supposed to be making x amount of money at least from their their known salary their known income now able to afford um things that seem far outside their their means and I that's probably another thing that led investigators onto their Trail in the sense that they were able to to purchase um uh these residences and all the other things and and live this lifestyle that just um seemed out of the ordinary for for most public servants and deid water overall impact do you think their alleged actions likely had on the office of the former New York Governor where she worked well I'm sure there's a lot of damage control right now within Democratic circles in New York to try to figure out um what if anything did Linda Sun compromise from a a policy perspective now again this wasn't the Democratic party this wasn't Washington DC she wasn't involved in anything as far as we can tell from a national security perspective but if you're uh looking at it from the other side in the Chinese government and you're trying to find someone who's got placement and access um to very important people here in the United States well Linda sun was a great candidate for that and she um over time got uh recruited and and then um was feeding information or was trying to use her access to influence policy even within New York on behalf of the Chinese government so I still think it's it's unclear the impact obviously it's significant um whether it goes Beyond New York into Washington or other parts of the country that'll also be interesting to see but this isn't this to me is just the latest revelation of a much deeper campaign of Chinese influence operations and recruitment uh for intelligence purposes of people here that um they've been doing now for quite a long period of Time how widespread do you think it is well it's very widespread uh The Washington Post actually uh yesterday came out with a story that was talking a separate story about uh these Chinese influence operations here in the United States that were time to occur when president president uh she came to San Francisco uh a couple months ago and all the things that different elements of the Chinese government were we trying to do to um sort of promote his visit and also um denigrate uh anti- uh Communist party or anti-g protesters here in the United States so that's pretty interesting Revelation and then there have been a number of of uh Espionage related investigations and cases with people either formerly in the intelligence Community the world that I came from we in the military um active duty Army Navy um Personnel so this is this seems to me that we're at least here in the United States we're facing a a much uh more pervasive campaign of of Chinese intelligence operations and influence operations and and the the arrest of uh Linda Sun just to the latest in in this long pattern of activities well one of those examples that you just mentioned former CIA officer Alexander yunqing admitted he had worked for the Chinese government what penalties has he faced uh I'm not sure if he got charged with violations of the Espionage Act or other federal laws but this is again there someone who came from that World um that is not something you are supposed to do when you take an oath to defend the US Constitution and Protect US national security and be exposed to all this very sensitive information and intelligence and uh my colleagues in the intelligence committee take great steps to make sure that people do not um uh sort of turn their back on the US government and engage in these kind of uh activities and unfortunately he is um an example of someone who did that but whatever the charges he's facing I'm sure they're significant and this is the consequence this is the consequence of a violating your your oath to the Constitution just finally what do you think will likely happen to Linda sun and her husband now well now they're going to face a federal criminal trial and the burden of proof to to prove um that Linda sun and her husband were guilty of these charges the burden prooof rust on the US government so um it's a fair and open uh criminal trial they will have uh Linda son and her husband their defense team will have access to all the information that the government has and then it's going to be a question of will they both based on the evidence that's being presented um against them will they actually try to go to trial and contest that uh in a jury trial or will they seek a plea deal with the US government and um get a lesser amount of jail time but then cooperate with the US government to potentially shed Insight on some of these other things we've been talking about so it's unclear how it's going to proceed from that legal perspective we we watching close jav Ali thanks so much as always for your time all right thank you you man