AOC and other lawmakers paid thousands to Chinese foreign agent in campaign ads

Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and several other politicians spent thousands in campaign payments to a Chinese foreign agent, Fox News Digital reported. 

Ocasio-Cortez, along with representatives, Kevin Mullin, D.-Calif., Grace Meng, D.-N.Y, and Nicole Malliotakis, R.-N.Y., paid Sing Tao U.S., a subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based Sing Tao News Corporation, for advertising during the midterm election cycle. 

The Chinese-owned entity, Sing Tao U.S., was registered as a Chinese foreign agent in 2021 by the Department of Justice. Yet, the representatives all paid campaign cash to the company after it was designated as such. 

Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign spent nearly $1,500 on advertisements with the newspaper during the midterm election cycle. Similarly, Reps. Mullin, Meng, and Malliotakis paid between $1,000 and $7,000 in advertising to several Sing Tao entities, according to Federal Election Commission filings. 

Sing Tao runs several Chinese language operations in the United States, including several publications in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

While the company has claimed that it is free from the Chinese Communist Party’s influence, the paper is considered to be pro-Beijing and received more than half of its content from Star Production Limited, a Chinese company, Axios reported.