Los Angeles (AP) — A former Southern California mayor pleaded guilty Friday to acting as an unlawful agent of the Chinese government.
Eileen Wang, who stepped down as the mayor of Arcadia earlier this month, was charged in April with one rely of acting within the United States as an unlawful agent of a overseas government. She pleaded guilty to doing the bidding of Chinese officers by sharing articles favorable to Beijing, with out prior notification to the US government as required by regulation.
The 56-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person metropolis council, from which the mayor is chosen on a rotating foundation. Federal prosecutors say Wang’s unlawful conduct occurred from late 2020 to 2022. Arcadia metropolis officers and Wang’s attorneys have mentioned it ended earlier than she took workplace.
Arcadia is situated about 13 miles northeast of Los Angeles. The metropolis of about 53,000 is majority Asian and has a excessive focus of Chinese residents.
Wang appeared in downtown LA federal courtroom to enter her plea. The listening to included procedural questions from US District Judge Wesley Hsu to guarantee Wang understood her rights and the implications of her guilty plea. A Mandarin interpreter was current however Wang mentioned she didn’t want their help.
Wang was allowed to stay out on a $25,000 bond till her sentencing on October 6. She faces up to 10 years in jail and three years of supervised launch.
According to her plea settlement, Wang and her fiancé on the time, Yaoning “Mike” Sun, labored on behalf of government officers for the People’s Republic of China by promoting their propaganda on a web site known as US News Center.
Sun is serving a four-year sentence after he pleaded guilty to the identical cost final October. He was additionally listed in marketing campaign filings as the treasurer for Wang’s 2022 election marketing campaign.
In one occasion in June 2021, a government official despatched Wang a hyperlink to a letter to the editor revealed within the Los Angeles Times written by the consul normal of the People’s Republic of China in Los Angeles.
The piece refuted reviews of the persecution, compelled labor, and abuse of Uyghurs, the Turkic ethnic minority, in China’s Xinjiang province, stating, “There has never been genocide in Xinjiang or forced labor in the region’s cotton fields or any other sector.”
Within minutes, Wang shared the hyperlink on her web site.
The US and a number of other different international locations have declared that Beijing’s insurance policies towards the Uyghurs amounted to genocide and crimes towards humanity.
At the time, Wang was engaged to Sun, her attorneys mentioned. She has mentioned that relationship resulted in spring 2024. A press release they launched after her resignation references “her trust and love for apparently the wrong person who ultimately led her astray.”
Residents and former Arcadia elected officers have mentioned Wang ought to have been requested to resign after she got here beneath FBI investigation for Sun’s case.
Acting mayor Paul Cheng mentioned he and different councilmembers’ palms have been tied on the time. The metropolis constitution solely empowers them to take away a fellow councilmember in the event that they’ve been convicted of against the law, he mentioned, which Wang had not on the time.
“If there is a federal investigation that is in place, we are not investigators and to politicize an issue only impacts whatever federal investigation is out there,” Cheng mentioned.