The governor’s staff continues to block scrutiny of her Beijing-friendly history.

G overnor Kathy Hochul’s office last week denied National Review’s request for government records and correspondence relating to her numerous interactions with the Chinese consulate general and pro-Beijing groups in New York.

I had initially filed the request in March, months before the FBI raid in July at the Long Island mansion of Linda Sun, a former deputy chief of staff to Hochul, and before her arrest in September on charges that she worked as an unregistered agent for the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party. My intent was to get to the bottom of Hochul’s strange, Beijing-friendly posture — an outlier among prominent U.S. politicians these days.

This includes her appearance at parades alongside former Chinese consul general Huang Ping organized by pro-Beijing community groups in New York and her therefore noteworthy absence from a Manhattan banquet hosted in honor of Taiwan’s then-president Tsai Ing-wen last year. The previous year, Hochul had delivered a keynote address to the annual gala of the China General Chamber of Commerce (CGCC), whose members include U.S.-designated “Chinese military companies,” and sent representatives to events at the Chinese consulate general but not Taiwan’s consulate.

I wanted to learn why the governor did all of this, and after Sun’s arrest, I hoped that my request would bring more details to light about how the Chinese consulate general allegedly duped Hochul. But last Wednesday, the executive chamber, which is the name for the New York governor’s office, denied my request, which I had filed under the state’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL).

This filing sought all records from Hochul’s office relating to the Chinese consulate general in Manhattan and certain Beijing-linked groups. It named Sun and another former Hochul aide as likely custodians of the records I was seeking and also provided 14 search terms with which the governor’s team could pull up records.

But the executive chamber claimed, in its notice to me, that my request was too generally worded, such that the “broad scope of your request does not sufficiently identify the records sought in order to enable the Executive Chamber to facilitate a proper search to locate responsive records.” It also claimed that it did run part of my request, conducting a “diligent search” based on a “reasonable interpretation of the request.” This, it claimed, did not yield any “responsive” records.

There’s reason to be skeptical of this explanation. Rather than deny my request right off the bat, the executive chamber stonewalled. After I filed the request in March, the New York executive chamber asserted its prerogative to delay the date by which it would approve or deny my request seven times. It denied two of my administrative appeals requesting that it more swiftly disclose the documents I sought. Earlier this month, I also sent the executive chamber multiple emails offering to help the staff to more narrowly tailor the request to speed up the response time. I received no response. Then, only as the deadline to address my third and final appeal loomed, Hochul’s team issued the denial.

After I requested comment for this column, the executive chamber’s FOIL team got more specific, claiming in an unsigned statement that they searched the inboxes of Sun and the other aide I named for records related to Tsai’s visit, and that “inputting the search terms identified in your request and Tsai Ing-wen, for the period” did not bring up any “responsive records.”

But I had provided “CGCC” and “China General Chamber of Commerce” as search terms. Those phrases almost certainly show up in Sun’s email records, given that Hochul has spoken at a CGCC function, and the chamber has publicly identified Sun as its main point of contact within Hochul’s office on a few occasions. Even if none of my other search terms resulted in hits that could lead to the disclosure of documents under my request, the CGCC component alone suggests that the governor’s office could be hiding the ball.

Ultimately, this denial puts a legalistic cloak over what I suspect to be a public-relations motive. Hochul is, after all, in damage-control mode. Immediately after Sun’s arrest, on September 3, she executed an abrupt shift from her previous Beijing-friendly positions as governor, demanding the expulsion of China’s consul general in Manhattan. Earlier this month, her top economic-development executive attended a celebration of Taiwan’s National Day on October 3 in New York City (Hochul was not represented at the previous year’s reception).

The governor also has a long-running record of ignoring inquiries about China. In November 2021, I asked Hochul’s office about her ties to the China General Chamber of Commerce. I saw that CGCC’s nonprofit arm had contributed funds to support a Thanksgiving-turkey-drive initiative run by the governor’s office. I wrote to Hochul’s press team, describing reporting that characterized CGCC as part of Beijing’s united-front political-influence operations. My question was straightforward: “Does Governor Hochul have any concerns about the chamber’s participation?”

No one responded to that message or to eight additional inquiries I sent over the three-year period before Sun’s arrest, about a range of engagements between Hochul’s team and CCP-tied entities that were considerably more troubling than a Thanksgiving charity initiative. But the first response to a press inquiry I addressed to Hochul’s team came only after Sun was arrested.

It’s understandable that they would stonewall in this situation, if Hochul, as it appears, allowed herself to be molded into a Beijing-friendly governor. The executive chamber has thrown up another roadblock, forestalling efforts to achieve transparency this way for at least several more months.