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Notes -
Chinese Asset in NY State Government
Linda Sun was born in China, moved to the US with her parents at the age of five, and later became a US citizen. She rose up to become the Deputy Chief of Staff for the governor. I know plenty of folks who maintain dual citizenship with other countries, but I don't know how serious the USG was/is about making Chinese nationals "really" renounce their Chinese citizenship in order to become US citizens, nor do I have any idea if Sun did/did not.
She was a subject of interest starting in at least 2020, when she was interviewed by the FBI about her trip to China. While not knowing whether she's categorized a dual citizen (which I do know, for many purposes, the security apparatus of the USG treats as synonymous with "foreign national" for many purposes) or simply a former Chinese citizen with Chinese heritage, I also don't know what the state of these sorts of FBI inquiries are. Have they become a more routine/random matter, where they just occasionally drag some folks in this category in to question them and see if anything comes up? Or did they already have some reason to be suspicious of her in 2020? Her recent indictment acting as a foreign agent, visa fraud, alien smuggling, and money laundering conspiracy includes events going back to 2015 (quite a few in the 2018-2019 years), but it's not clear at what point the FBI or anyone else became aware of any of them or to what extent they motivated the 2020 interview. NYT describes it as "questions were repeatedly raised".
This took years and a significant quantity of behavior bubbling up to get to the point where she was finally fired (March 2023). I can't currently find any details of the firing, but the NY governor's press secretary said that she was fired for "misconduct". Another year and a half, and we got an indictment. This may all be a very plausible timeline for how these sorts of things generally go.
So. Paul Manafort. He joined Donald Trump's campaign in March 2016 (when they were likely scrambling to get any sort of organization going), was promoted to campaign manager three months later in June, then fired two months after that in August, essentially immediately after Trump received his first security briefing.
To this day, there are still people (some even in TheMotte) who think that Paul Manafort is the smoking gun of Trump's culpability with Russia. That Trump obviously must be guilty for having that guy on his campaign. That it proves that "Trump's campaign" was working with Russia, and that it's Trump's personal fault.
On the other side, I personally believe that Paul Manafort and his Russian collaborators made a victim out of Donald Trump, and I can remain perfectly consistent in saying that I think that Linda Sun and her Chinese collaborators made a victim out of the NYS governments that employed her.
I think someone could make a plausible argument that both Trump and specific folks in the NYS gov't were culpable, though I probably would be pretty skeptical; as I said, I think the timeline in the Sun case is plausibly fine. But I would need an absolutely phenominal argument to support the proposition that Trump was personally culpable for Manafort, but that individuals in the NYS government were not culpable for Sun... otherwise, frankly, I would have to chalk such a position up to pure partisanship.
If the Trump–Russia allegations were limited to Manafort and only Manafort, then you might have an argument. But there were several more people in Trump's circle who were indicted in connection with the Mueller investigation, and several more who were implicated due to having ties with Russia but committed no actual crimes. There ended up not being any fire, but there sure was a lot of smoke; it's certainly unusual for so many people in a presidential campaign to have connections to a country the US isn't exactly on great terms with. Combine that with Trump making statements about Russia that weren't exactly in line with what anyone on either side of the political aisle was saying at the time, and suspicion is understandable. If there were evidence that the conduct in question went beyond Sun and deeper into the Governor's office, I would expect there to be an investigation.
I don't think Democrats have any qualms about hanging even more shit on Andrew Cuomo.
but the whole thing is insane. if you apply this algorithm to any other politician then you will find matches. what about hilllary and the uranium one stuff or anyone that was part of the hillary campaign. the trump-russia thing was the IC community fucking over the president. if you check all the fucking idiots that have interacted with your target then you will find some of them are doing dodgy shit with foreign actors. there is literally no way you can prevent this because people are fucktards and you need to interact with people in order to have a presidential campaign. but it is even more insane because if you look beyond manifort who was a fucktard you are left with carter page who is basically an idiot. it wasn't enough for the IC community to bring attention to the fact that manifort was a fucktard they also needed to take advantage of the fact that page was an idiot then exploit him to make more noise. but don't worry spygate was a conspiracy according to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spygate_(conspiracy_theory))
Um, the Justice Department spent 2 years investigating this. I don't remember anyone on the left saying they shouldn't; hell, even Trump seemed like he forgot about it by the time it wrapped up. Of course, no one cares about an investigation into a private citizen.
Why would I care about Wikipedia's assessment of the issue?
Because Wikipedia is usually the first search result for any random thing any random person wants to research on the internet.
And that person would do well to look elsewhere.
I mean, sure, but we're talking about the average person, who is always going to take the path of least resistance. So it should concern us that said path is heavily tilted toward one worldview.
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