New York Democratic Rep. Grace Meng praised a high-ranking Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official four years before she took federal office, unearthed footage reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation shows.

In December 2008, Meng and other leaders of local Chinese community associations attended a banquet in Queens, New York, to welcome a visiting CCP Central Committee member named Lin Jun, according to a DCNF review of a series of YouTube clips linked on the website of an organization affiliated with the congresswoman.

The footage shows Meng referred to Lin as “our chairman,” an apparent reference to his role as the head of the All-China Federation Of Returned Overseas (ACFROC). The Department of Justice (DOJ) considers ACFROC an agency of a Chinese intelligence service called the United Front Work Department (UFWD). (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Dem Rep Serves As ‘Honorary Chairwoman’ Of Org Reportedly Linked To Chinese Intel Agency)

“My name is Meng Zhaowen,” Meng said in Mandarin, using her Chinese name. “In January of next year, I will begin serving as a New York State Assembly member. Today, I specially welcome Chairman Lin to Flushing’s largest and newest building. Today, our Zhejiang overseas Chinese organization and everyone made [this banquet] very beautiful — am I right? — all for the sake of specially welcoming our Chairman Lin!”

“And, as for me?” Meng continued. “It’s my duty to represent the state government, overseas Chinese and our second generation overseas Chinese. [I’m] especially grateful to Chairman Lin for taking care of us — we really need your leadership!”

A large, red banner hanging behind Meng revealed Chairman Lin’s primary Chinese government position: “Warmly Welcome The Delegation Of Chairman Lin Jun Of The All-China Federation Of Returned Overseas Chinese To Visit The United States.” The DCNF found no evidence that Meng is a member of ACFROC.

Before Meng spoke, Chairman Lin delivered his own remarks.

“We have a responsibility to care for the survival and development of overseas Chinese compatriots, and a responsibility to care for the difficulties everyone faces,” Chairman Lin told those gathered at the 2008 banquet, footage shows.

Steve Yates, former Chinese language analyst for the National Security Agency, reviewed the footage from the 2008 banquet as well as the DCNF’s translation.

“The translation is 100 percent accurate,” Yates said. “Nothing lost. Nothing spun.”

Meng did not respond to numerous requests for comment.

‘Resign Immediately’

One GOP congressman called on Meng to resign after reviewing her past praise for the CCP official.

“Any member of Congress who is found to have had a working relationship with the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front must resign immediately,” Indiana Republican Rep. Jim Banks told the DCNF. “I hope Democrats in Congress become more willing to condemn CCP infiltration of their party.”

The DOJ recently indicted Linda Sun, Meng’s top aide at the time of the 2008 banquet, on charges of acting as an unregistered agent of China.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that years after working for Meng, Sun met the “heads of key groups identifiable in the indictment as being United Front-linked, including the U.S. Federation of Chinese-American Entrepreneurs and the Henan Association of Eastern America,” or HAEA.

Meng was HAEA’s “deputy chairwoman” during the 2008 banquet. HAEA began identifying Meng as “honorary chairwoman” in February 2012, the month before Meng launched her congressional campaign in March 2012, according to HAEA’s archived records. The top of the home page of HAEA’s website currently displays a photo of Meng along with her honorary HAEA title.

Federal authorities and China experts warn that ACFROC specializes in a range of United Front tactics to monitor and influence the Chinese diaspora in service of the CCP.

HAEA did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

‘Explicit Mandate’

ACFROC’s Chairman Lin also served as a member of the CCP Central Committee and as a delegate to the National People’s Congress when he visited New York in 2008, according to his ACFROC profile. The CCP Central Committee is the Party’s “highest institution” and the National People’s Congress is China’s “unicameral legislature,” the U.S. Congressional Research Service says.

During Lin’s tenure as ACFROC’s chairman, his organization worked with China’s Ministry of Public Security to lay the groundwork for so-called “overseas Chinese police stations” around the globe, which U.S. authorities warn the CCP uses to control the Chinese diaspora. In 2022, the FBI raided a New York City-based Chinese association allegedly housing one such police station that had been jointly established by the Ministry of Public Security and an ACFROC senior official.

“The All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese is openly and very directly linked to the CCP, with explicit mandate to influence overseas Chinese communities,” former National Security Agency analyst Yates said. “It is not a cultural organization. It is political.”

“It is one thing for people to gather to celebrate their Irish, Polish, Indian, or even Chinese heritage. It is quite another to publicly thank a CCP leader for ‘taking care of us’ in Flushing, New York. That is more than a little problematic,” Yates said.

John Dotson, deputy director of Global Taiwan Institute, told the DCNF that although ACFROC’s leaders may seem like goodwill ambassadors and community organizers, they actually serve as UFWD intelligence officers and spymasters.

“The CCP in general, and the UFWD in particular, have invested great effort over the past few decades in trying to take over ethnic Chinese civic organizations, and turn them into vehicles for monitoring and controlling the Chinese diaspora,” Dotson said. “The UFWD either inserts its people into these civic organizations, and/or recruits their leaders. Those people are then dual-hatted, including a role with ACFROC or some other United Front organization.”

Indeed, a 2023 memo from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party says “the networks built by the UFWD are often viewed as prime operating grounds by the PRC’s intelligence agencies, which seek to draw on members of United front organizations to support espionage and influence operations.”

Dr. June Teufel Dreyer, former commissioner of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, told the DCNF that ACFROC “can sponsor candidates for office, often but not all of them ethnic Chinese, who will then support the CCP’s views when elected.”

“I’ve witnessed that the CCP uses carrot-and-stick methods to control the Chinese diaspora,” Solomon Yue, an Oregon Republican National Committee member, told the DCNF. “The UFWD invites and pays for leaders of Chinatown associations to visit China. In return, those leaders facilitate the CCP’s infiltration of America.”

“ACFROC is absolutely a national security threat to America,” Yue said.

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