Federal prosecutors announced Monday that Arcadia, California Mayor Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government and has stepped down from her position, according to the Justice Department.
The single felony count — acting on U.S. soil as an unregistered agent of a foreign government — carries a potential 10-year prison term, according to NBC News. At a federal court hearing in Los Angeles, a magistrate judge released Wang, 58, on a $25,000 bond, required her to hand over all passports, and barred her from communicating with Chinese government officials.
Beginning in late 2020 and continuing into at least 2022, Wang partnered with Yaoning "Mike" Sun — a Chinese national who had served as both her fiancé and her campaign treasurer — to run a website called U.S. News Center, which positioned itself as a news outlet aimed at Chinese American readers, according to the Los Angeles Times. Court documents show that both Wang and Sun took direction from Chinese government officials on what content to publish, and they routinely sent officials screenshots as evidence of how widely the articles were being read.
The plea agreement details a June 2021 episode in which a Chinese official instructed Wang to post material rejecting claims of genocide and forced labor in Xinjiang. Court records show Wang had the article up within minutes and sent the official a link; the official wrote back, "So fast, thank you everyone," according to the Los Angeles Times. The following August, when an official noted that one of her posts had drawn more than 15,000 views, Wang responded, "Thank you leader."
According to The New York Times, Sun received a four-year federal prison sentence in February, having entered a guilty plea the previous October on a single count of acting as a foreign government's illegal agent. Federal prosecutors alleged that Sun, working alongside his Chinese government handlers, had deliberately groomed Wang, hoping she would ascend in California politics and serve as a vehicle for expanding Beijing's reach in the state.
A November 2024 sentencing handed John Chen, a third participant in the scheme, a 20-month federal prison term after he admitted guilt on charges of bribery and operating as an unregistered Chinese agent, according to CBS News.
In a statement released through attorneys Brian A. Sun and Jason Liang, Wang's legal team maintained that the charges stem entirely from her personal life and have no bearing on her tenure in elected office — specifically, that the underlying conduct involved a website she ran with a man she had considered her future husband, according to ABC News. The attorneys added that Wang "is sorry for the mistakes she has made in her personal life."
City Manager Dominic Lazzaretto said the city conducted its own review of the matter and determined that municipal funds, employees, and governmental decisions were untouched by the conduct prosecutors described, according to the Los Angeles Times. A replacement mayor is expected to be chosen when the City Council convenes for its next session.