(The Center Square) — A New York jury has deadlocked in the high-profile trial of a former aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul who was accused of acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government.
Former Hochul aide Linda Sun was accused by the U.S. Justice Department of using her position in state government to advance Beijing’s agenda in the state in exchange for financial benefits worth millions of dollars.
But shortly before a fourth day of deliberations in the trial were set to resume on Monday, the Brooklyn jury sent a note to U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan saying it “remains unable to reach a unanimous verdict” on the 19-count indictment of Sun and her husband, Chris Hu, who were both charged with money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to commit bank fraud and misuse of means of identification, authorities said.
“We deeply feel that no progress can be made to change any jurors’ judgment on all counts,” the panel wrote to the judge. “There are fundamental differences on the evidence and the interpretation of the law.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Solomon told the court Monday that the federal government plans to retry the case “as soon as possible.” A status hearing on retrying the case was scheduled for later in the week.
Sun, who served as deputy chief of staff to Hochul, was arrested in September 2024 at her Long Island home and charged with violating and conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, visa fraud, alien smuggling, and money laundering conspiracy, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office for Eastern New York.
Federal prosecutors alleged the couple used the money they laundered to buy a $4.1 million home in Manhasset, Long Island, a $2.1 million condo in Hawaii, expensive automobiles and other luxury items.
Sun, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in China, held several positions in the New York State government from 2012 until 2023, including deputy chief of staff to Hochul for a year, beginning in September 2021, according to prosecutors. She was fired by the local administration in 2023, officials said.
Hochul has previously distanced herself from the former aide, stating in previous remarks that her administration notified federal authorities about “evidence of misconduct” during Sun’s tenure in the state government and had been cooperating with law enforcement officials on the investigation.
Sun’s attorney argued during the trial that she was merely “doing her job” for the Hochul administration by trying to improve relations between the state government and New York’s Asian community.
“Linda Sun did what she was hired to do,” Sun’s attorney Jarrod Schaeffer told the jury, according to transcripts of the trial. “For more than a decade, on behalf of New Yorkers, she worked for the state.”
But federal prosecutors claimed during the trial that the couple reaped millions of dollars in financial benefits and pointed to evidence showing how Linda Sun “bragged repeatedly to her handlers in the Chinese government about what a good asset she had been.”
“Linda Sun betrayed the state of New York to enrich herself,” Solomon said in his closing remarks. “You saw it time and again, a clear pattern of corruption.”
