NY Times chipping away at Chinese meddling in NYC – Latest News
In the spirit of giving the satan its due, we should salute The New York Times for its epic examination of how China is influencing New York City elections.
A crew of 9 reporters convincingly documented how brokers of the Beijing authorities “helped defeat a state senator for attending a banquet with the president of Taiwan . . . condemned a City Council candidate on social media for supporting Hong Kong democracy . . . and ended the careers of politicians who opposed China’s authoritarian government.”
The article claimed, with proof, that Chinese brokers set up scores of supposedly charitable organizations in Manhattan and all through the 5 boroughs as half of its scheme, and that the organizations are violating their state and federal tax-exempt standing by partaking in political advocacy.
Clear-cut interference
Among different issues, the 4,000-word opus, which ran on Monday’s entrance web page and included digital hyperlinks to related videos online, was a welcome break from the paper’s relentless condemnations of President Trump.
Apparently it couldn’t discover a solution to blame him for the scandal of quite a few clear-cut cases of election interference by a international adversary.
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Of course, if China had been working to help Trump as a substitute of New York Democrats, together with Mayor Adams, Gov. Hochul and leftist candidates for the City Council and state Legislature, relaxation assured it will have been a very completely different story.
In that case, Russiagate, the Times’ warped obsession in Trump’s first time period, would have gotten a second life, this time as Chinagate.
The reporters uncovered a web of Chinese “hometown association” teams which are successfully created and managed by the federal government’s Manhattan consulate.
As they write, “More than 50 organizations with ties to Beijing have mobilized members to fund-raise or endorse political candidates over the past five years . . . Many were nonprofit charities, which are prohibited by law from electioneering.”
It cites videos of 35 ceremonies the place Chinese authorities officers led teams of New Yorkers by way of oaths that affirm China’s Taiwan coverage and promise “to safeguard the development interests of the motherland.”
Winnie Greco leaves her home at 1447 Gillespie Street in the Bronx. LP Media
The reporters discovered “at least 19 registered charities that had ignored the ban on election activities.”
“And yet,” they write, “the hometown groups made endorsements or hosted fund-raisers despite answering ‘no’ to questions from the Internal Revenue Service.”
They report that the IRS declined to remark, then add: “A spokesman for New York’s tax company, which is chargeable for implementing a related state law, stated it didn’t have the assets to search for such violations.
Imagine that.
You can wager Attorney General Letitia James could be on the case in a heartbeat if these teams had been serving to Trump or any Republican.
But as long as they’re serving to the precise crew, it’s not a huge deal.
At least 9 of the supposed nonprofit charities with ties to China have endorsed the re-election of Mayor Adams, the Times says.
It quotes a chief of the Chong Lou USA Association Headquarters as saying he was mobilizing the group’s 2,000 members to re-elect the mayor, including, “We are all united in voting for him.”
The reporters clearly have been engaged on the story for a long time, which is how they witnessed money altering fingers at three Adams rallies in July.
Former City Hall aide Winnie Greco handed THE CITY reporter Katie Honan an open potato chip bag containing an envelope full of money after a reelection occasion for Mayor Eric Adams in Harlem, Aug. 20, 2025. Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Times sat on the story
But the paper didn’t report these earlier incidents till final week, after Winnie Greco, a longtime Adams affiliate and marketing campaign volunteer, handed a potato chip bag full of money to a reporter from The City.
The Times then wrote that its reporters had “witnessed other Adams supporters handing out red envelopes with cash at three separate campaign events: one in Flushing, Queens; another in Manhattan; and a third in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park.”
It stated funds to Chinese media reporters had been common as thank-yous and protection sweeteners.
The Times additionally quoted an aide to Adams, Todd Shapiro, as saying the marketing campaign tries “to safeguard against any improper influence.”
“If any group is prohibited from making endorsements or engaging in campaign activities, those rules apply to them, and we expect them to follow the law.”
Hochul has had her own questionable coping with entrance teams for China’s authorities.
The Times reviews the Asian American Community Empowerment nonprofit co-hosted a fund-raiser for her in late 2021 at a restaurant owned by the group’s chief, a businessman named John Chan.
The paper claimed he “is aligned with the Chinese government and was once convicted of trafficking heroin and smuggling Chinese citizens into the United States.”
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It wrote that, months later, Hochul introduced that $10 million in pandemic support could be distributed to Asian teams, with Chan’s nonprofit getting $45,000.
In addition, the FBI arrested a former aide to Hochul, Linda Sun, and accused her of conspiring with the heads of two Chinese associations, saying their political actions “were supervised, directed, and controlled” by Chinese officers.
Are the votes legal?
These and different painstaking particulars make the long article compelling, but there stays a evident gap at the center of it.
The argument that the associations are flipping elections by turning out voters in adequate numbers to make the distinction ignores a basic problem.
If the teams are engaged in unlawful political actions, why does the Times not even query if the voters it says are deciding these slim elections are American residents, and thus legally permitted to vote?
After all, to grow to be a citizen and gain the precise to vote means going by way of the naturalization course of, which typically means holding a inexperienced card for at least three years.
Applicants should additionally preserve steady US residence, exhibit good ethical character, and cross English and civics assessments.
Then comes the citizenship “Oath of Allegiance” ceremony, which requires candidates to surrender all international allegiances.
Only then would registering to vote be even potential, assuming all different data is correct and trustworthy.
Yet if these voters are nonetheless swearing allegiance to China in different settings, because the Times demonstrates, they haven’t fulfilled a fundamental legal requirement of citizenship, and their votes may be unlawful.
Given how close some of the elections concerned had been, it’s a main omission for the Times reporters to not raise the prospect of unlawful voting, particularly in the context of their in any other case admirable work.
I raised that time in an e-mail to 1 of the lead reporters on the story, asking why the writers assume the votes had been legally solid if the organizations selling the candidates are working illegally.
His identify is Michael Forsythe, and a short Times bio says he has written extensively from and about China.
He would probably then have some data about how Beijing brokers operate on international soil, together with America.
I by no means acquired a response, leaving me with the suspicion that there’s one other enormous dimension to this election scandal.
