The mayor of Arcadia, California just confessed that she was secretly working for the Chinese Communist Party and resigned Monday morning. Then she appeared in federal court.
Eileen Wang, 58, turned in her resignation at Arcadia City Hall early Monday before federal prosecutors announced she had been charged with acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China. She has already agreed to plead guilty through a deal struck in April that was just unsealed Monday.
Wang was a registered Republican but switched to the Democratic Party in 2022.
The felony charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison. Wang was released on a $25,000 bond following her initial court appearance.
Wang was elected to the Arcadia City Council in November 2022 and began her term as mayor in February 2026, less than three months before the charges surfaced.
Before she ever took her oath of office, she pleaded guilty to secretly taking orders from Beijing.
From late 2020 through 2022, Wang worked at the direction and control of Communist Chinese Party officials to spread pro-Beijing propaganda inside the United States. Her partner in the scheme was Yaoning “Mike” Sun, her former fiancé and campaign manager. Together they operated U.S. News Center, a fake news website that spread party propaganda to Arcadia’s Chinese American community as directed by Chinese government handlers.
Sun is currently serving a four-year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty to the same charge in October 2025.
🚨 Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang in California has been charged with acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China in the United States.
Mayor Wang admitted to acting as a foreign agent from at least 2020 through 2022 – promoting PRC propaganda in the U.S. and acting…
— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) May 11, 2026
The timing of Monday’s unsealing was almost certainly not an accident. Trump departs for Beijing Wednesday for high-stakes summit talks with Xi.
Former federal prosecutor Lou Shapiro said Trump’s Department of Justice was sending a message with the announcement.
“I think there is no coincidence to the timing of that,” Shapiro told ABC7.
“I think he’s trying to use this as an opportunity to show them that, ‘We are onto you. And that you may think you’re getting something over on us, but we’re not going to let that happen. People will be held accountable.'”