“By her own admission, Eileen Wang secretly served the interests of the Chinese government,” officials say. She was elected mayor of Arcadia in 2022 and has resigned.
Prosecutors said that Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun promoted “pro-PRC propaganda” in the U.S. through a website titled “U.S. News Center.” PRC refers to the People’s Republic of China.
Sun pleaded guilty in October to one count of acting as a foreign agent and is serving a four-year prison sentence, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
Wang’s plea agreement says she admits she acted as an agent of China’s government and did not notify the U.S. attorney general as required.
The agreement says Wang and Sun “received and executed directives from PRC government officials to post pro-PRC content on the website” and sometimes sought permission from Chinese government officials to post content.
I’m sorry, what did she do that is considered illegal? Is that not free speech?
Unless the “propaganda” was making death threats, there’s nothing illegal about intentionally spreading foreign propaganda, is there?
The crime is not the speech. And propaganda, even foreign propaganda, is not illegal. The crime is being an unregistered foreign agent.
If you do work for a foreign government in the United States, you have to register as such with the US government.
And especially you have to disclose it if you work for the US government at the same time. It’s very basic conflict of interest stuff.
And just for clarity’s sake, I have contracts with local governments, and in the process of initially getting and subsequently renewing them, I fill out a bunch of forms about whether or not I have relationships (paraphrasing) with numerous countries, Iran, Belarus, Russia. Oddly enough, no China.
This being said, I don’t know for sure, but I’m curious if not only was it a lie by omission, but she knowingly submitted false statements via these forms or similar.
This is why Tim Pool got in trouble last year when it was revealed that most of his income was from Russia - The money or his statements weren’t illegal, but he never registered, even though he should’ve known. He only got away with it because he is in fact dumber than what most people realize; He genuinely seems like he didn’t know he was in fact paid by the russian state.
And white. He got away with it because he’s white.
No he got away with it because fascist and establishing a guilty mind requires proving a mind.