NYT:

In New York City, social clubs backed by China undermined a congressional candidate who once challenged the regime on Chinese television.

They helped unseat a state senator for attending a banquet with the president of Taiwan.

And they condemned a City Council candidate on social media for supporting Hong Kong democracy.

In the past few years, these organizations have quietly foiled the careers of politicians who opposed China’s authoritarian government while backing others who supported policies of the country’s ruling Communist Party. The groups, many of them tax-exempt nonprofits, have allowed America’s most formidable adversary to influence elections in the country’s largest city, The New York Times found.

The groups are mostly “hometown associations” of people hailing from the same town or province in China. Some have been around for more than a century, while dozens of others have sprung up over the past decade. Like other heritage clubs in a city of immigrants, they welcome newcomers, organize parades and foster social connections.

But many hometown associations have become useful tools of China’s consulate in Midtown Manhattan, according to dozens of group members, politicians and former prosecutors. Some group leaders have family or business in China and fear the consequences of bucking its authority. Consulate officials have enlisted them to intimidate politicians who support Taiwan or cross Beijing’s other red lines. In one case, a Chinese intelligence agent and several hometown leaders targeted the same candidate.

This meddling may seem modest, involving politicians who are unlikely to affect international policy. But China is determined to quash dissent in its diaspora before it spreads back home, said Audrye Wong, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies Chinese influence.

Beijing is also making a longer bet, she said: “You never know which politician might eventually run for Congress at the national level, or become a presidential candidate.”…

China’s influence machine is one of the world’s most expansive and effective. Over decades, it has harassed exiles in France, bribed academics in Britain and targeted politicians in Canada. It has even built clandestine police stations in dozens of countries to threaten dissidents. Its efforts have been especially potent in New York City, home to 600,000 ethnic Chinese people.

In 2023, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested leaders of one group, the America Changle Association, for operating a police station in its clubhouse. Last year, a federal indictment accused a former aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul of conspiring with the heads of two Chinese associations, saying their political activities “were supervised, directed, and controlled” by Chinese officials. And this summer, F.B.I. agents interviewed group leaders in Chinatown about consulate pressure, two leaders said….

NYT:

In July, New York Times reporters witnessed other Adams supporters handing out red envelopes with cash at three separate campaign events: one in Flushing, Queens; another in Manhattan’s Chinatown; and a third in Sunset Park in Brooklyn. At those events, Mr. Adams picked up support from leaders of influential Chinese community groups, including several with close ties to the Chinese government.

Ms. Greco, a top Adams fund-raiser whose homes were raided last year by federal investigators looking for evidence of Chinese interference in the 2021 mayor’s race, was present at all three of the rallies….

The Adams campaign said it was unaware of any payments to reporters and had not approved them.

“Mayor Adams had absolutely no knowledge of this and does not condone it,” Todd Shapiro, his spokesman, said. “He has never — and would never — authorize anyone to hand out cash or gifts to reporters. Any such behavior is inappropriate and unacceptable.”

At the event in Flushing on July 13, dozens of Chinese American leaders gathered outside a public library branch to offer their support for Mr. Adams, giving him a needed boost as he trailed badly in polls. Mr. Adams, a registered Democrat who took office in 2022, is running a long-shot bid for re-election as an independent in November as his mayoralty has been tarnished by federal investigations and scandals.

The event, organized by four influential community leaders, buzzed with dozens of fervent backers, proudly wearing shirts adorned with Mr. Adams’s face and energetically waving U.S. flags as they chanted and called for his re-election.

One of the organizers, Steven Tin, the director of Better Chinatown USA, which hosts the Lunar New Year parades in Manhattan’s Chinatown, was seen by The Times holding $50 bills and handing out red envelopes to reporters from Chinese-language news organizations.

At the event, Mr. Tin said that it is a common practice in Chinese culture to give cash to “reporters, YouTubers, photographers” as a “thank you for coming” gift.

Reached by phone on Thursday, Mr. Tin said that the payments to reporters were small and were made not to ensure coverage, but rather as a “courtesy.” He said he would ask the Adams campaign to cover the cost of water and banners for the event, but that he had not yet discussed whether it would reimburse him for the cash payments.

Mr. Shapiro, the Adams campaign spokesman, ruled that out.

“We do not provide it, we do not direct it and we do not authorize anyone to distribute it,” Mr. Shapiro said. “Any suggestion otherwise is false and misleading.”…

AP:

An appeals court has thrown out the massive civil fraud penalty against President Donald Trump, ruling Thursday in New York state’s lawsuit accusing him of exaggerating his wealth.

The decision came seven months after the Republican returned to the White House. A panel of five judges in New York’s mid-level Appellate Division said the verdict, which stood to cost Trump more than $515 million and rock his real estate empire, was “excessive.”

After finding that Trump engaged in fraud by flagrantly padding financial statements that went to lenders and insurers, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered him last year to pay $355 million in penalties. With interest, the sum has topped $515 million.

The total — combined with penalties levied on some other Trump Organization executives, including Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr. — now exceeds $527 million, with interest.

“While the injunctive relief ordered by the court is well crafted to curb defendants’ business culture, the court’s disgorgement order, which directs that defendants pay nearly half a billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” Judges Dianne T. Renwick and Peter H. Moulton wrote in one of several opinions shaping the appeals court’s ruling.

UPDATE: The 323 pages of multiple opinions are here. You can get a sense of the mess from the beginning of Justice Moulton’s opinion for himself and one other justice:

Defendants appeal from two decisions (and the resulting judgment) holding that defendants violated Executive Law § 63(12) by repeatedly submitting deceptive business records to banks, insurance companies, and the New York City Parks Department. Presiding Justice Renwick and I find that Supreme Court correctly found defendants liable. We agree with Supreme Court that the Attorney General acted well within her lawful power in bringing this action, and that she vindicated a public interest in doing so. We also find that Supreme Court properly ruled only on claims that are timely under the applicable statute of limitations. However, we would modify the remedy ordered by Supreme Court. While the injunctive relief ordered by the court is well crafted to curb defendants’ business culture, the court’s disgorgement order, which directs that defendants pay nearly half a billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

This decision is one of three issued by this Court today. Presiding Justice Renwick and I agree with our colleagues on certain points. Most importantly, we agree with Justice Higgitt, who is joined by Justice Rosado, that the Attorney General is empowered by Executive Law § 63(12) to bring this action. However, our remaining disagreements with our colleagues’ decisions are profound. In sum, Justice Friedman finds that Supreme Court’s rulings are infirm in almost every respect and would hold that the Attorney General had no power to bring this case under Executive Law § 63(12). He would dismiss the complaint outright. Justice Higgitt, while agreeing that the Attorney General had the power to bring this lawsuit, finds that errors made by Supreme Court require a new trial limited to only some of the transactions in question.

Respectfully, Presiding Justice Renwick and I cannot harmonize our approach with that of our colleagues. Justice Friedman’s decision runs athwart our prior rulings in this case and misconstrues Executive Law § 63(12) and the case law that has interpreted that statute. While he justly criticizes comments made by the Attorney General about defendants when she was running for that office, he ignores that this issue has already been considered, and rejected, by this Court. Justice Higgitt’s decision contains cogent criticisms of aspects of Supreme Court’s two written decisions. However, this Court has the power to independently analyze the record made below in evaluating those decisions. That record amply justifies Supreme Court’s findings of fact and conclusions of law. Returning this action to Supreme Court for a new trial as urged by Justice Higgitt is both unnecessary and likely terminal. It is difficult to imagine that a trial could proceed while one of the principal defendants, and a central witness, is President of the United States. The inevitable elapse of time and the attendant difficulties in recreating a vast record of testimony and documents – an exercise that is both Sisyphean and unneeded, because an extensive trial record already exists – would likely consign this meritorious case to oblivion.

Because none of the three decisions garners a majority, Justices Higgitt and Rosado join the decretal of this decision for the sole purpose of ensuring finality, thereby affording the parties a path for appeal to the Court of Appeals. Like Justice Friedman, we commend them for doing so. Unlike Justice Friedman, we do not find that this necessary measure is unfair to defendants. This Court previously imposed a stay on the judgment, a stay that defendants can seek to extend pursuant to CPLR 5519(e) until the Court of Appeals rules.

NYT:

A close adviser to Mayor Eric Adams was suspended from his re-election campaign on Wednesday after giving a journalist cash tucked inside a potato chip bag.

The adviser, Winnie Greco, who was the mayor’s former director of Asian affairs at City Hall and one of his best fund-raisers, had returned to the campaign trail as a volunteer during Mr. Adams’s run for a second term. She had been at the center of controversy after the F.B.I. raided her homes last year as part of a federal investigation into possible Chinese government interference in the 2021 mayor’s race.

On Wednesday, Ms. Greco attended an event with Mr. Adams in Harlem and gave more than $100 in a red envelope stashed inside the snack bag to a reporter for The City, according to an article in the online news outlet. The City promptly reported the incident to the city’s Department of Investigation, and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn contacted the newspaper’s lawyers, according to the newspaper’s account….

California Democratic leaders are preparing to put a measure before voters that would temporarily suspend congressional redistricting maps drawn by an independent commission for the rest of the decade as retaliation for Texas (or other Republican) states engaging in their own Republican gerrymanders. We’ve been told that the law would be written with a trigger, so that if California approves it, the measure would only kick in as a tit-for-tat against a Republican gerrymander in Texas or elsewhere.

Yet this released bill, which is perhaps still a work in progress, would seem to kick in if any state does any mid-decade redistricting, even if that’s another Democratic state going a gerrymander. (There’s an exception for court ordered redistricting and a special rule for Ohio that is already slated to redraw their maps). Here’s the relevant text of the trigger:

(b) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Constitution or existing law, the single-member districts for Congress reflected in Assembly Bill 604 of the 2025–26 Regular Session shall temporarily be used for every congressional election for a term of office commencing on or after the date this subdivision becomes operative and before the certification of new congressional boundary lines drawn by the Citizens Redistricting Commission pursuant to subdivision (e).

(c) (1) Subdivision (b) shall become operative only if Texas, Florida, or another state adopts a new congressional district map that takes effect after August 1, 2025, and before January 1, 2031, and such redistricting is not required by a federal court order.

(2) The condition described in paragraph (1) shall include a new congressional district map adopted by the State of Ohio only if the map is adopted pursuant to division (F)(3) of Section 1 of Article XIX of the Ohio Constitution.

Now maybe this is just a drafting glitch and it will be fixed before it goes to the voters. But one could easily see a Democratic-dominated state such as Illinois or Maryland tweak their maps JUST to trigger the California re-redistrict. It could also be triggered if a state voluntarily makes changes in light of Supreme Court rulings on the Voting Rights Act or otherwise.

Stay tuned.

NY Post:

An upstate GOP state senate candidate’s campaign allegedly paid homeless people to claim they made donations to him, allowing him to net matching taxpayer funds, a report says.

Several homeless men in Auburn told the Albany Times Union in a story published Friday that Caleb Slater’s campaign offered them $30 a pop to sign paperwork saying they donated $250 to his run in November.

This way, Slater, who ultimately lost his bid for office, could allegedly receive public funds from the state that match contributions up to $250, the paper noted.

At least seven people who spoke to the outlet say they never contributed to Slater‘s campaign but were paid to submit contribution forms. One man said he was asked to recruit other straw donors as well.

NYT:

Nine Latino Democratic officials and political operatives pleaded not guilty on Wednesday in South Texas to charges of criminal voter fraud, accusations that their defenders called blatant voter suppression and political intimidation by the state’s Republican attorney general.

Gerry Goldstein, a lawyer for the most prominent defendant, told the presiding judge that he had filed a motion Wednesday morning to dismiss the charges and challenge the constitutionality of the state law used to prosecute his client, Juan Manuel Medina, a former chairman of the Democratic Party of Bexar County, the fourth largest in the state.

Gabriel Rosales, the director of the Texas chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, called the charges “a complete attack on democracy.”

“This is voter suppression 101,” Mr. Rosales said.

The nine defendants, including Mr. Medina, were indicted last month by a South Texas district attorney working with the state’s famously conservative attorney general, Ken Paxton. Six of the defendants appeared in person in a courtroom in Pearsall, Texas, while three others, including Mr. Medina, appeared via Zoom. A state judge is expected to consider the motion to dismiss the case in early October.

It was the second time in less than four months that Mr. Paxton has charged prominent Latino Democratic officials with criminal “ballot harvesting,” the usually routine act of collecting absentee ballots and bringing them to drop boxes or polling sites to be counted. A half-dozen people, including a county judge, two City Council members and a former county election administrator, were charged with voter fraud in May.
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