Over the years we documented numerous IRS-related charities, 501(c)(3) nonprofits, that engaged in illegal activities including supporting domestic terrorism, drugs, pedophilia and election interference. And the IRS did nothing about them.
Correction. The IRS didn’t do nothing. It came after us because we had written negatively about Hillary Clinton.
Meanwhile, a Times Union story describes widespread political donations by nonprofits. That’s quite blatantly illegal. Now the story is flawed. It bears all the hallmarks of using AI to trawl a database to turn up evidence of a particular activity, then turning up too much data and failing to turn it into a compelling story on the human end. Using AI to search databases paid off with some of the recent health care fraud stories, but an AI tool without human guidance isn’t a story. And so some of the nonprofits turned out to have been flagged because they attended paid campaign events, dubious but not that big of a deal, or donated fairly small amounts of money to industry trade PACs. Ditto.
And the story seemed to be tiptoeing around the one ‘story’ it did have probably because it feared the backlash. I had to connect the bread crumbs scattered throughout the story.
Longtime state Assemblyman Ron Kim has for years watched as nonprofit organizations in his Queens district have used their money and connections to unlawfully try to influence elections. He said they act as if they’re “untouchable.”
The unlawful practices, which have resulted in few, if any, legal consequences for the nonprofits, have ranged from handing out literature with his opponents’ images to making direct contributions to candidates in communities that can be integral to the outcome of elections.
Kim estimates the organizations collectively may have improperly spent “millions of dollars” when considering all of the resources they have devoted to campaigns…
Much of the recent activity involved Chinese-American groups backing Chinese-American candidates…
Many nonprofits backed Kim’s opponent, Yi Andy Chen, with endorsements in his last race. Chen, who lost to Kim in a close primary, ran one of the most well-funded Assembly campaigns of the year.
In the final weeks of the primary, Chen touted many community endorsements on the social media website X and his campaign website, including at least five from 501(c)(3) nonprofits…
One endorsement was made by the Fu Shan Association, a group formed to support Chinese immigrants from the Fujian province. After the endorsement, the group’s president, Chen Jinrong, took the microphone at a June campaign rally for Chen, video of the event shows…
Heng Chen, another nonprofit leader, announced at the rally: “On behalf of the Fukien Benevolent Cultural Association of America and all our members, I wish Andy Chen complete success in his election.”
In the crowd, supporters held a large red banner with the nonprofit’s logo during the rally, video shows. Andy Chen’s website also listed an endorsement from the charity, which uses multiple English names but has one Chinese name. The organization has contributed nearly $10,000 to other political campaigns since 2011.
The Times Union carefully avoids quoting Kim’s full allegations about Chinese Communist interference.
Queens state Assemblyman Ron Kim says groups tied to the Chinese Community Party tried to topple him and steal his predominantly Asian-populated seat in the June Democratic primary.
“There were clear patterns of foreign influence trying to dictate the outcome of the election — groups with ties to mainland China and the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]. They were trying to steal the Flushing seat,” Kim told The Post.
Kim, a Korean-American, is speaking out after the stunning arrest of Linda Sun, a former top aide to Govs. Kathy Hochul and Andrew Cuomo.
Sun, along with her husband, Christopher Hu, is charged with being an unregistered agent for the CCP in exchange for millions of dollars in kickbacks and laundering the illicit money to buy a $4.1 million mansion in Manhasset, LI, a $2 million posh Honolulu condo and a fleet of luxury cars, including a 2024 Ferrari Roma.
Kim’s Dem opponent in the 40th District’s primary race, upstart Yi Andy Chen, was endorsed by the American Chinese Commerce Association. The association is a group identified as linked to the CCP and John Chan, a Chinese-American activist and chairman of the group with reportedly close ties to the People’s Republic of China and its Consulate General office in New York.
Kim, who was first elected in 2012, won his race by 443 votes.
That means next time, China may win. Interestingly, the Times Union article mentions Hochul was the largest recipient of illegal nonprofit donations at $18,000. As is William Colton who also comes up in the TU article as a recipient of nonprofit cash and who has been previously tied to ChiChom operations.
In April, the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) newly-appointed Deputy Consul General in New York met with overseas Chinese community leaders from across the city (World Journal, April 28). The meeting was hosted by BRACE (Asian-American Community Empowerment; 美国亚裔社团联合总会), a grassroots organization founded by John Chan, a prominent power broker with extensive connections to the PRC government (Washington Post, September 3, 2024; The New York Times [NYT], December 9, 2024). The Deputy Consul General praised BRACE for providing community services and safeguarding the rights and interests of overseas Chinese, while Chan thanked the consulate for its continuing support.
In 2009, the then-director of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office—which merged with the United Front Work Department in 2017—called for Chinese people to actively participate in local politics and make their voices heard, framing this participation as defending the interests of minority groups. The united front also mobilizes ethnic Chinese communities to engage in protests by tapping into explosive “wedge” issues, such as race and identity.
John Chan connects many of the individuals involved in local politics there. A 2024 article by Sing Tao, a PRC government-linked media outlet registered as a foreign agent in the United States since 2021, noted that John Chan had been involved in Brooklyn elections for the past 20 years and claimed that almost every politician who had risen to power has a close relationship with him.
Long-time state representative William Colton is a regular fixture at united front-linked events, and has sponsored multiple bills to make the PRC’s National Day a New York state holiday.
Lin Yu who immigrated to the United States from Fujian Province. On April 11, 2022, the youthful Chinese-American spoke to fellow immigrants from his hometown, Changle (Sino-US Innovation Times, February 14, 2022). Lin—who Chan had also endorsed—promised to change the Democratic Party from within and speak out for the Chinese community. A bright blue poster hanging on the wall as he spoke read “Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station”. Lin was hosted by the America Changle Association, whose offices the FBI raided in October 2022 for functioning as one of hundreds of Chinese overseas police stations
. In 2024, United front actors threw their weight behind Yi Andy Chen, a young contender who immigrated from Fujian Province to Queens when he was 13. Chen’s campaign website described him as an executive director of two Chan-affiliated community organizations (Yi Andy Chen for New York State Assembly, accessed June 25, 2024). He secured endorsements from the American Chinese Chamber of Commerce, led by Chan, and the Fujian Hometown Association, known for close ties with the PRC consulate. Speaking to the Fujianese association, Chen was flanked by two men who physically harassed anti-CCP demonstrators in San Francisco during Xi Jinping’s 2023 visit to the city
Chen got his start working on a 2012 campaign for Congresswoman Grace Meng. There, Chen would have worked alongside Linda Sun, a former aide to two New York state governors recently charged with spying for the PRC.
All of this is stuff we are not talking about at our own peril.
Anything Fujianese is a red flag. In an article from a few years ago, Democrat Donors and a Chinese Secret Police Station, I described some of how this worked.
While most New Yorkers think of Chinatown as being all one place, there are actually strict divisions between the generations of immigrants, mainlanders who predate the Communist takeover and later arrivals who are divided by language and politics. The feuds between these two groups across tenement property lines and community groups have been as furious as they have been invisible to the rest of the city.
The Chinese city of Fuzhou had allegedly set up the spy operation in Little Fuzhou. To most New Yorkers, the street it was on looks like just another packed Chinatown thoroughfare, but within Chinatown, East Broadway is the ‘broadway’ of Little Fuzhou. At the borders, the Cantonese of the older Chinese-Americans confronts the Fujianese of the new arrivals. And the Cantonese speakers have been delighted to see the FBI raid on one of the epicenters of Fujianese power in Chinatown. Local papers and TV stations have talked of little else.
They hope that the FBI raid on Little Fuzhou last year and the recent indictment of two men, Chen Jinping (no known relation to President Xi “Pooh” Jinping) and “Harry” Lu Jianwang, will be the beginning of a larger reckoning
At one America Changle Association event, Democrat politicians and representatives for Rep. Grace Meng were in attendance. Figures associated with the Fuzhou group were shown to have donated to Adams, Meng, as well as her father, Jimmy Meng, a Democrat state assemblyman who was sent to prison after soliciting an $80,000 bribe inside a fruit basket. Other recipients included Rep. Judy Chu, on whose behalf Chinese spy Fang Fang helped organize a town hall.
Earlier this year, Canadian Security Intelligence Service documents leaked revealing that similar setups of immigrant association groups had been used to work to elect Trudeau and his Liberal Party. The secret papers exposed “undeclared cash donations” and “having business owners hire international Chinese students and ‘assign them to volunteer in electoral campaigns on a full-time basis.’”
Fujian associations are a red flag for Chinese Communist operations. Combine that with non-profits and you have a potential situation where ChiCom businesses can donate to nonprofits which then do election turnout operations for candidates. And political networks backing elected officials tied to Communist China are rising across America.
