Brooklyn Jury Deadlocks in China-Agent Trial of Ex-Cuomo Aide, Retrial Uncertain

The collapse of a high-profile foreign-agent trial in Brooklyn exposes the challenges—and perils—of prosecuting alleged foreign influence in America’s political corridors.

When the jury foreperson late last Monday passed Judge Brian Cogan a terse note admitting deadlock on all 19 counts, the stately marble-and-mahogany of Brooklyn’s federal courthouse suddenly felt oddly fragile. After a month of often-strained testimony and 40 witnesses brought by the government, the criminal case against Linda Sun—once a rising star in the offices of New York Governors Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul—had ground to a halt in a stalemate as firm as any diplomatic logjam.

Ms Sun, alongside her husband Chris Hu, stood accused by federal prosecutors of acting as an unregistered agent for China—specifically, steering New York policy to Beijing’s advantage in exchange for alleged gifts worth millions. The Department of Justice built a formidable-sounding case on wire fraud, visa fraud and money laundering, painting Sun as a Machiavellian intermediary: the would-be architect of a subtle realignment of Albany’s compass for foreign gain. Jurors, for now, did not entirely agree.

The mistrial is as much a logistical setback as a public spectacle. Prosecutors will, at minimum, have to re-assess their evidence and tone, as they head for a status conference with Judge Cogan on January 26th. The defense, by contrast, leaned heavily into character: Sun, said her lawyers, was nothing more than a diligent operative navigating New York’s fractious political landscape. The expensive homes in Manhasset and Hawaii, the Ferrari Roma—a familiar legal parade of envy—all, they argued, had nothing to do with Beijing.

For New Yorkers, the deadlocked prosecution cuts strikingly close to home. The city has long prided itself as a global hub, where consulates, immigrant communities and hard-edged politics intermingle like brownstones and bodegas. When federal authorities allege that new arrivals or their children in public service are beholden to faraway interests, the resulting spectacle is rarely productive. This trial reinforces both the potential and the limits of transparency and public trust in the city’s political machinery.

The case’s shadow stretches beyond criminal law and into the structures of governance. For state and city authorities, the spectre of foreign influence—real or imagined—threatens both legitimacy and efficacy. It also imposes a subtle chilling effect: New Yorkers of Chinese descent, already wary amid national security-driven recriminations, may now eye government service with scepticism. At worst, prudent vigilance shades into costly paranoia; at best, the city’s famous diversity risks being harnessed for the next round of partisan jousting in Albany or City Hall.

Financially, the collapse is a reminder that New York’s endemic status as a magnet for money—legitimate and suspect alike—cannot be disentangled from global political agendas. The Sun-Hu household’s parade of assets, meticulously detailed in court, underscores a long-standing tension: the city offers both opportunity and a backstage for soft power plays. Cases like this risk lending credence to the view that cosmopolitanism and corruption are difficult to separate.

Nationally, the Biden administration has signalled its intention to take foreign interference more seriously, albeit with little unity across the political spectrum. The Department of Justice has dusted off the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in recent years, with mixed results. The Sun case, like the failed FARA prosecution of Greg Craig in Washington or the lapsed charges against Chinese scientists in Houston, reveals how unglamorous, contested, and legally uncertain these efforts prove in practice.

Across the Atlantic, European capitals have faced similarly anemic results in stemming covert state influence. Britain’s highly public crackdown on Russian oligarchs after the Ukraine invasion drew headlines, but subsequent prosecutions have produced more pageantry than convictions. Meanwhile, Canada too grapples with how to protect public institutions without succumbing to xenophobia, or paralysing bureaucratic tedium.

A muddled mandate for federal watchdogs

The New York stalemate, then, portends more equivocation than resolution. For federal watchdogs, its lesson is sobering: American juries, steeped in reasonable doubt, demand more than insinuation and luxury ledgers to convict public officials as foreign proxies. For state leaders, any temptation to posture as anti-corruption crusaders must be checked against the real possibility of undermining civil servants for whom loyalty cannot be so easily measured—or, at least, not in public spectacle.

We reckon that the political theatre of such cases does little to shore up public confidence in institutions. As with the decade-old China Initiative (a national-security campaign since abandoned by the Justice Department after much controversy), high-profile busts rarely yield the sense of closure or catharsis their architects imagine. Instead, they join the conga line of unfinished stories that, as here, punctuate the city’s legal and political seasons.

If there is a path forward, it lies in a more robust, less performative approach: greater transparency about money flows in public office, but without the foreign fear-mongering that has so often haunted American cities at moments of broader anxiety. This will require more than courtroom forensics; it demands enhanced oversight in Albany and better routine vetting of state appointees. That, and a measure of humility about what the criminal law can—and cannot—solve.

For now, the Sun mistrial leaves New York’s ruling class with questions it cannot answer and a dossier that will grow fatter as more cases drift through the judicial morass. The city, as always, will digest the intrigue and move on, less shaken than bored, waiting for the next act in the theatre of governance. ■