Democratic New York Rep. Grace Meng praised senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials four years before she joined Congress, according to unearthed footage reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

In December 2008, Meng and leaders of the local Chinese community association were in Queens, New York, at a banquet to welcome visiting Chinese Communist Party Central Committee member Lin Jun. According to DCNF reviews a series of YouTube clips linked to the organization's website Partnership With female lawmakers.

picture show Meng called Lin “our chairman,” which was clearly his role As the representative of the Association of Chinese Overseas Returnees (ACFROC), which the Department of Justice (DOJ) considers an arm of Chinese immigrant groups. Intelligence agencies It is called the United Front Work Department (UFWD). (Related: Exclusive: Democratic lawmaker becomes “honorary chairman” of organization with alleged ties to Chinese intelligence)

“My name is Meng Zhaowen.” Meng said She said in Chinese, “I will be serving as a New York State Assemblyman from January next year. Today, I am giving a special welcome to Chairman Lin at the largest and newest building in Flushing. Today, our Zhejiang overseas Chinese organization and all of us [this banquet] It's so beautiful, don't you think? It's all to give a special welcome to our Chairman Lin!”

“So what about me,” Meng continued, “it is my duty to represent the state government, the overseas Chinese and the second generation of overseas Chinese. [I’m] Special thanks to Chairman Hayashi for taking such good care of us. We really need your leadership!”

A large red banner hung behind Meng read Chairman Lin's main position in the Chinese government: “We warmly welcome the All-China Association of Returned Overseas Chinese Chairman Lin Jun's delegation to the United States.” DCNF found no evidence that Meng was a member of ACFROC.

Before Meng spoke, Chairman Lin made his own comments.

“We have a responsibility to care about the survival and development of our Chinese compatriots overseas, and we also have a responsibility to care about the difficulties we all face,” Chairman Lin told a dinner crowd in 2008, according to the footage.

Steve Yates, a former Chinese language analyst for the National Security Agency, reviewed the 2008 dinner footage and the DCNF's translation.

“The translation is 100 percent accurate,” Yates said. “Nothing has been lost. Nothing has been distorted.”

Meng did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“Resign immediately.”

One Republican lawmaker called on Meng to resign, noting her past praise for Chinese Communist Party officials.

“Any member of Congress found to have collaborated with the Chinese Communist United Front must immediately resign,” Rep. Jim Banks, R-Indiana, told DCNF. “I would like to see Democrats in Congress become more vocal in condemning the Chinese Communist Party's infiltration of their party.”

The Justice Department recently charged Linda Sun, a top aide to Meng at the time of the 2008 dinner, with acting as an unregistered agent of China.

The Wall Street Journal Reported Sun said Thursday that several years after working for Meng, he met with “representatives of key organizations identified in the indictment as having ties to the United Front, including the Chinese American Businessmen's Association of America and the Henan Eastern America Association (HAEA).”

Meng served as “vice president” of the HAEA. 2008 Banquet. HAEA is Identify In February 2012, the month before Meng became “honorary chairman,” Release According to HAEA archives, she participated in the March 2012 congressional election campaign. Currently, the HAEA website home page reads: display A photo of Meng with the honorary HAEA title she was awarded.

Federal authorities and China experts have warned that ACFROC specializes in a variety of united front tactics to surveil and influence overseas Chinese residents on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.

HAEA did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

[Image created by DCNF with screenshots from ding13524’s YouTube account]

“A clear command”

ACFROC Chairman Lin also served as a member of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and a delegate to the National People's Congress during his visit to New York in 2008. According to In its ACFROC profile, the U.S. Congressional Research Service noted that the CCP Central Committee is the party's “highest organ,” and the National People's Congress is China's “unicameral legislature.” say.

During Lin's tenure as ACFROC president, his organization Worked U.S. authorities have warned that the Chinese Communist Party is using it to control Chinese residents overseas, and it has worked with China's Ministry of Public Security to lay the groundwork for setting up so-called “overseas Chinese police stations” around the world. In 2022, the FBI raided a New York City-based Chinese association. Reportedly There is one police station established jointly by senior officials from the Ministry of Public Security and ACFROC.

“The All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese has open and direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party and a clear mission to influence overseas Chinese communities,” said Yates, the former National Security Agency analyst. “It's not a cultural organization; it's a political organization.”

“It's one thing for people to come together to celebrate their Irish, Polish, Indian or Chinese roots, but it's quite another to publicly thank the leaders of China's Communist Party for 'looking after us' in Flushing, New York. That is more than a little problematic,” Yates said.

[Image created by DCNF with ACFROC website and ding13524’s YouTube account screenshots]

John Dotson, vice president of the Global Taiwan Institute, told DCNF that while ACFROC leaders may appear to be goodwill ambassadors and community activists, they actually serve as operatives and spymasters for UFWD.

“The Chinese Communist Party in general, and the United Front in particular, have made significant efforts over the past several decades to hijack ethnic Chinese civic organizations and turn them into instruments of surveillance and control of ethnic Chinese immigrants,” Dotson said. “The United Front has been pumping members into these civic organizations and recruiting leaders who then end up operating in a dual role, including in their roles in ACFROC and other United Front organizations.”

In fact, a 2023 memo from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party stated: say “The networks established by United Front forces are often seen as major bases of operations for Chinese intelligence agencies, who seek to use members of United Front organizations to support espionage and influence operations.”

Dr. June Teufel Dreier, a former commissioner of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, told DCNF that ACFROC “often, but not exclusively, nominates candidates of Chinese descent for office who, if elected, espouse the views of the Chinese Communist Party.”

“We have witnessed the Chinese Communist Party use carrots and sticks to control Chinese immigrants,” Solomon Yue of the Oregon Republican National Committee told DCNF. “UFWD is inviting and paying for leaders of Chinatown organizations to travel to China. In return, these leaders are helping the Chinese Communist Party infiltrate America.”

“ACFROC is undoubtedly a national security threat to the United States,” Yu said.

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