OAN Staff Addie Davis
9:53 AM – Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang resigned from the Arcadia City Council amidst a federal charge alleging she acted as an illegal Chinese agent.
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The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the charge on Monday, accusing Wang of “acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China (PRC),” according to a press release from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.
“All Americans should be alarmed to learn an elected official was brazenly spreading propaganda on behalf of the Chinese government,” said Patrick Grandy, assistant director in charge of the Los Angeles Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) field office.
“The FBI is dedicated to rooting out those illegally acting as agents of a foreign government as they do the bidding of America’s adversaries,” he continued.
In November 2022, Wang was elected to the city council, from which the mayor is selected on a rotating basis, according to the DOJ. Arcadia, located in Los Angeles County, less than 20 miles from the city of Los Angeles, has a population of over 50,000.
The department claimed Wang agreed to plead guilty to the charge, which carries a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison. The city of Arcadia said that as of Monday, Wang had resigned from her position.
“Individuals in our country who covertly do the bidding of foreign governments undermine our democracy,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli.
“This plea agreement is the latest success in our determination to defend the homeland against China’s efforts to corrupt our institutions,” he added.
According to the plea agreement, Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun worked from 2020 through 2022 “at the direction and control” of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government officials and coordinated with people based in the U.S. to promote the PRC’s interests, including advancing pro-PRC propaganda.
Sun is currently serving a four-year sentence after pleading guilty in late 2025 to “acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government.”
Wang and Sun operated U.S. News Center, a website purporting to provide news to the local Chinese American community. However, the DOJ alleged they received and implemented directives from Chinese government officials to post pro-PRC content.
The release alleged that Wang and other individuals were contacted by a Chinese official in June, 2021, with pre-written news articles, which included a PRC official written essay that appeared in the Los Angeles Times. The Times claimed it was a letter to the editor that responded to an editorial piece published by the outlet highlighting human rights abuses in the communist nation.
“China’s Stance on the Xinjiang Issue—There is no genocide in Xinjiang; there is no such thing as ‘forced labor’ in any production activity, including cotton production. Spreading such rumor to do defame China, destroy Xinjiang’s safety and stability, weaken local economy, suppress China’s development,” the essay stated, according to the release.
The former mayor then posted the article minutes later and responded to the official with a link to it on her website, with other members of the group chat doing the same.
“So fast, thank you everyone,” the PRC official responded.
Later, Wang made edits to the article upon request, and reported the change to the official, as well as a screenshot showing more than 15,000 views for the article, to which the PRC official messaged, “Great!”
“Thank you leader,” Wang replied.
The DOJ also stated that she was in communication with a high-level member of the PRC intelligence apparatus, John Chen, who was sentenced to 20 months in prison in November 2024 in New York for his crimes, including acting as an illegal agent for the PRC.
Wang reportedly asked Chen to post a “news” article from her website, writing, “This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send.”
In her plea agreement, Wang admitted she did not notify the attorney general that she was acting as an agent of the PRC, that she was located in the U.S. when she committed these acts, and that she had not disclosed on her website that some of the content had been posted on behalf of members of the Chinese government.
“Individuals elected to public office in the United States should act only for the people of the United States that they represent,” said John A. Eisenberg, assistant attorney general for national security. “It is deeply concerning that someone who previously received and executed directives from PRC government officials is now in a position of public trust at all, but particularly so because that relationship with that foreign government had never been disclosed.”
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