Johnny's girl is out of the clink

From the Times Ledger:

Jia “Jenny” Hou walked out of a Pennsylvania detention facility a free woman last week after an immigration judge decided not to deport her to China. The treasurer of former City Comptroller John Liu’s 2013 mayoral campaign had been mired in legal problems since she was convicted in federal court of soliciting illegal donations.

The immigration court’s decision, rendered by Judge Kuyomars Golparvar, came at the end of a three-hour hearing in York, Pa. Liu, who was not charged with any wrongdoing in the original case, sat with Hou’s family in the courtroom and spoke with reporters after her release.

Hou was 27 years old in 2013 when she was found in Manhattan federal court guilty of attempted wire fraud, obstructing justice and making false statements to authorities and though she faced up to 45 years in prison, she was sentenced to just 10 months. She filed an appeal midway through her jail time and was released to wait for the results at home.

After losing that appeal, Hou was sent back to prison last March, and when she completed her sentence in December, she was transferred to an immigration detention center to await the court’s decision on whether she would be deported because of her felony conviction.

After the court allowed her to stay in the United States, Hou vowed to use good judgment in her future and thanked the Chinese community in eastern Queens for their support throughout this painful period.

Liu furious at friends' prison sentences

From the Politicker:

City Comptroller John Liu is fuming after his former campaign treasurer and a fund-raiser were sentenced to prison terms by a judge earlier today.

“For reasons I may never fully understand, the U.S. Attorney’s Office set out to destroy me with what has been described as an extraordinarily intrusive and exhaustive investigation,” Mr. Liu said in a statement, which continued to defend Ms. Hou.

“Failing to find that I had done anything wrong, they proceeded to set up a weak man and a wonderful young woman. Jenny Hou does not deserve this ordeal and injustice she has been put through,” he contended. “I am very sad but even more angry at what has occurred. The U.S. Attorney’s Office was wrong and should not be proud of its conduct.”

According to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office, Mr. Pan was sentenced to four months in prison while Ms. Hou was sentenced to 10 months. Both were assigned an additional three years of supervised release.

Liu buddies convicted

From DNA Info:

A former aide and a fundraiser for City Comptroller John Liu were both found guilty in federal court on Thursday of helping to concoct a straw-donor scheme to benefit Liu's campaign, according to the U.S. Attorney's office.

Donor Xing Wu “Oliver” Pan, 47, and former Liu campaign treasurer Jia “Jenny” Hou, 26, were accused of skirting campaign finance limits and defrauding the city of matching funds by setting up "straw donors" to Liu's campaign.

Those straw donors allegedly gave money in groups to Liu's campaign and were reimbursed at a later date by the real donors.

“As the jury found, Jia Hou and Oliver Pan stuck a knife into the heart of New York City’s campaign finance law by violating the prohibition against illegal campaign contributions, all to corruptly advantage the campaign of a candidate for citywide office," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a press release.

"Cases like this give the people of New York yet another reason to be troubled by the electoral process, and they have a right to demand fair, open, and honest elections untainted by cynical subversion of campaign finance laws."

Pan was ultimately found guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and attempted wire fraud, and Hou was found guilty of attempted wire fraud, making false statements and obstruction of justice. She was found not guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Pan now faces a maximum of 40 years in prison, and Hou faces up to 45 years, according to a spokeswoman from Bharara's office.

Interesting revelations during Liu fundraiser trial

From the NY Post:

Thomas Wang, 26, testified yesterday in Manhattan federal court that he agreed to donate $500 to the Democratic city comptroller at the request of Liu’s then-campaign manager, Jia “Jenny” Hou, whom Wang had dated at the Bronx HS of Science.

Wang said he was hoping to get back together with Hou when she asked him to help meet a $1 million fund-raising goal for Liu’s nascent mayoral campaign in July 2011, and promised to personally reimburse Wang for his contribution.

Wang e-mailed Hou his credit card info, although online-chat records introduced into evidence in Manhattan federal court showed that Hou never used the card because the campaign had met its mark.

Also testifying yesterday was construction-company owner Jian Kang Chen, who posed next to Liu for a group photo at May 2011 fund-raising event where Liu was allegedly showered with illegal contributions.Chen, who also testified under a non-prosecution agreement, said he arranged for six of his employees to donate $800 each and later get reimbursed with his money.

Chen, who said he didn’t make a donation himself because he doesn’t have a green card, said he engaged in the scam to curry favor with Liu supporter and Chinese-grocery magnate Jeffrey Wu, who hosted the event and hired Chen to renovate apartments in a Flushing, Queens, high-rise he owns.

From the NY Times:

Mr. Liu has not been charged, but his name has been invoked frequently in court. On Thursday, Samantha Bell, an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was testifying about an interview with Ms. Hou that was conducted before her arrest.

Ms. Hou’s lawyer, Gerald B. Lefcourt, asked whether Agent Bell had asked Ms. Hou if there was a “personal relationship” between Mr. Liu and a longtime aide, Crystal Feng.

“Yes,” Agent Bell said.

Mr. Lefcourt also asked whether the agent suggested to Ms. Hou that because Mr. Liu had long-term relationships with Ms. Feng and another aide, Mei-Hua Ru, “that he would be close to them and they would throw her under the bus, or words to that effect.” Agent Bell denied that.

Is this saying what I think it's saying?

And so it begins

From The Politicker:

This afternoon, just as comptroller and likely 2013 mayoral candidate John Liu appeared alongside Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a press conference discussing the post-Sandy state of the city’s finances, legal arguments got underway this afternoon in the trial of his supporter Xing Wu “Oliver” Pan and his young campaign treasurer Jia “Jenny” Hou, who are being accused of participating in a conspiracy to direct illegal contributions to Mr. Liu’s war chest. In the courtroom today, Judge Richard Sullivan rejected four pre-trial motions requested by Mr. Pan and Ms. Hou’s attorneys and ordered the trial to begin as scheduled February 4.

The first motion argued before the court this afternoon was presented by Mr. Pan’s lawyer, Irwin Rockman. He said the case against his client should be dismissed entirely due to “outrageous government conduct,” namely that FBI agents continued their undercover investigation of Mr. Pan though he said they should have known “Mr. Pan had no interest in engaging in a violation of campaign finance law.” He based this argument on the claim wiretap recordings indicate Mr. Pan repeatedly told an undercover agent who posed as a Houston businessman eager to have funds in excess of the maximum allowed amount funneled to Mr. Liu through a system of straw donors about Mr. Liu’s campaign “self-imposed limit of $800″ on contributions. Mr. Rockman also said his client had been “terrorized” by law enforcement agents who subjected him to an “ominous vague threat” by indicating they knew the whereabouts of his wife and children. The lawyer said this was especially traumatizing to Mr. Pan because he spent his “formative years” in the “totalitarian regime” of the People’s Republic of China.

Judge Sullivan indicated Mr. Rockman’s motion had no legal precedent and said he felt like he was being asked to rule based on “squishy stuff in the pit of my belly” rather than the rule of law.

“This is a court of law, not a psychiatrist’s couch,” the judge said.

Unsurprisingly given his reaction to the argument, Judge Sullivan ended up rejecting the motion and siding with the prosecution’s contention the issues raised by Mr. Rockman did not constitute a violation of due process.

Busted Liu staffer housed Chinese party boss

From the NY Post:

Comptroller John Liu’s former financial fixer is tight with the hard-line Chinese party boss who busted blind dissident Chen Guangcheng, anti-government protesters in New York alleged.

They said Liu’s ex-campaign treasurer Jia “Jenny” Hou, who’s facing federal fraud charges and is accused of lying to the FBI, played host to the official’s top deputy when his rep visited the city in January.

The boss, security czar Zhou Yongkang, is reportedly on the hot seat in China for his handling of Chen, a human-rights lawyer who escaped house arrest and sought asylum at the US Embassy in Beijing.

Chen claims on a YouTube video that is was Zhou who arrested, beat and interrogated him.

Zhou’s deputy came to the city on Jan. 21, when he and Hou presented an award to a group that’s battled the Falun Gong, a religious and resistance movement, the protesters said.

They said the deputy, Yibao Zhu, bunked with Hou’s family on Long Island in a home owned by her rich father, Jian Li “Peter” Hou.

“This official was the personal guest for two weeks at Hou’s home while in New York,” said the Falun Dafa Information Center, which represents resistance members in New York.

Liu pals indicted; "support rally" planned

From the Daily News:

Embattled Controller John Liu’s former campaign treasurer, Jia (Jenny) Hou, was named in an indictment with fund-raiser Xing Wu (Oliver) Pan.

Pan was busted in November for trying to get around campaign contribution limits by rounding up straw donors to give more than $13,000 to Liu’s mayoral campaign.

Hou, 25, was arrested in February and accused of taking part in the same scheme by directing at least 40 fraudulent donations to the campaign.

The two cases were joined on Thursday.

Hou was already arraigned on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, attempting to commit wire fraud and obstruction of justice. Each charge carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.

The new indictment added one charge of making a false statement, which carries an additional five years in jail.

From the NY Post:

City Comptroller John Liu’s former campaign treasurer has been hit with a new charge of lying to the FBI during its probe of contributions to the embattled mayoral contender.

Jia “Jenny” Hou allegedly made the bogus statements on Feb. 27, one day before she was busted on charges of scheming to funnel illegal donations to Liu’s campaign.

Hou pretended that a Jan. 17 report she filed with the city Campaign Finance Board included all campaign-contribution bundlers “and [that] no one was left off,” according to a new indictment of fund-raiser Xing Wu “Oliver” Pan.

Hou also falsely claimed she had turned over “all responsive documents” after checking “every single e-mail in her e-mail account,” the Manhattan federal court filing says.

From Capital Tonight:

A reader forwarded an email invite sent by veteran Democratic consultant Bill Lynch to a “support” rally being held Monday for embattled NYC Comptroller John Liu “in light of recent investigations.”

The event is being held at a church, and Lynch is careful to note that this is NOT a campaign event, nor an effort to secure endorsements, but merely a moment to demonstrate general support for the comptroller as he battles for his political life.

Lynch’s firm, Bill Lynch Associates, served as the general consultant for Liu’s successful 2009 run for comptroller.

Liu has refused to pull the plug on his aspirations to run for NYC mayor in 2013, despite the fact that a top campaign aide was arrested in February on allegations of campaign finance fraud and a bundler was indicted on charges of conspiracy and wire fraud.

It will be interesting – not to mention telling – to see who shows up Monday.