Breaking national Security

Eileen Wang resigned this morning, hours before a federal plea deal revealed she’d been spreading Chinese government propaganda — all while Trump prepares to sit across from Xi Jinping this week.

The bilingual campaign ads were good. Warm. Community-focused. Eileen Wang ran for mayor of Arcadia, a Los Angeles suburb with one of the largest Chinese American populations in California, and she hit the right notes — local issues, shared identity, a vision for the city. What voters didn’t know was that federal prosecutors say Wang had already pledged a different kind of allegiance entirely.

On Monday morning, Wang handed in her resignation at Arcadia City Hall. Hours later, a federal plea agreement was unsealed in downtown Los Angeles confirming what U.S. Justice Department prosecutors had been building a case around: Wang had been operating as an unregistered foreign agent for the People’s Republic of China, posting pro-Beijing propaganda to a website called U.S. News Center under direct orders from PRC government officials.

She faces up to ten years in federal prison.

“I cannot say that the outcome was entirely surprising.” — Councilwoman Sharon Quan, who had been raising concerns about Wang for months

The timing is, to put it mildly, loaded. President Trump departs for Beijing this week for high-stakes talks with President Xi Jinping. Criminal defense attorney Lou Shapiro suggested the unsealing of the plea deal is unlikely to be accidental: “I think he’s trying to use this as an opportunity to show them that we are on to you — that you may think you’re getting something over on us, but we’re not going to let that happen.”