BREAKING: Linda Sun Signals Settlement Negotiations as Defense Warns of Lawyer Withdrawal
BROOKLYN — Defense counsel for Linda Sun and her husband, Chris Hu—accused of laundering millions through Beijing-linked proxies in exchange for Sun leveraging her Asian community liaison role to provide China’s government access to Governors Hochul and Cuomo and advance the Chinese Communist Party’s objectives—warned a U.S. judge they will seek to withdraw unless the court grants a substantial delay of any retrial, arguing that the couple’s seized assets have left them unable to fund an “effective defense.”
In a significant revelation, the January 20 letter filed ahead of Friday’s status conference also discloses that Sun’s lawyers are seeking “additional time” for “ongoing negotiations with the government regarding a potential resolution that would avoid the need for a retrial.”
The defense asks the court to adjourn any retrial until November 2026, citing three reasons: the defendants’ “strained financial position” after the seizure of their assets; the need for additional time for “ongoing negotiations”; and, if the financial issues cannot be resolved, enough time for new counsel to learn the sprawling record.
“The defendants are currently unable to fund an effective defense through their counsel of choice,” the letter states, pointing back to a prior motion and arguing that—more than a year after losing access to “nearly all their assets”—it “still has not been established” those assets were proceeds of unlawful activity.
As The Bureau has reported, the government’s public theory casts Sun—a former senior New York aide who handled outreach to Chinese- and Taiwanese diaspora communities for Governors Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul—as both a corruption defendant and a counterintelligence concern, alleging she forged Hochul’s signature to smuggle Chinese agents into the U.S. and advanced Beijing-linked interests while she and Hu profited through bribery, pandemic-era procurement, and money laundering. Sun and Hu deny wrongdoing.
The case ended in a mistrial in December after jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict, and prosecutors have indicated they intend to try again.
The stakes for the U.S. government, meanwhile, go well beyond one alleged corruption scheme. As The Bureau has documented, the Sun prosecution is a public test case for how American authorities can surface and prove alleged influence operations that sit in the gray zone between politics, diaspora community organizing, and covert state-directed activity.
The case offers a rare, open-court window into alleged counterintelligence tradecraft—and into how investigators describe the use of community organizations, consular officials, and political access as an influence pathway—an area Western security agencies have worked to map for years, but rarely litigate in front of jurors.
It also appears precedent-setting in its blend of legal tools: corruption and fraud allegations braided together with “agent” allegations, digital evidence, and foreign-influence framing—an approach prosecutors may want validated for future cases involving suspected influence activity inside federal, state and local governments.
Finally, the asset-seizure dispute itself may set a practical precedent. If defendants argue they cannot mount an “effective defense” without access to restrained assets, and prosecutors insist on keeping property frozen pending retrial or resolution, the litigation becomes a high-profile test of how far the government can go in restraining assets while still preserving a defendant’s ability to fund counsel.
Regarding those assets, the government’s evidence described two alleged tracks running in parallel: a pandemic-contract kickback stream in New York and a China-facing business-support stream tied to diaspora intermediaries.
