A company that was recently raided by the FBI and registered as an agent of the Chinese government produced campaign videos for Arcadia Councilman Michael Cao during his 2022 campaign, according to financial disclosure documents.
Cao’s campaign paid EDI Media Inc. more than $17,000 between July and September 2022 for television air time and video production costs, documents show.
Federal agents searched the EDI Media office in West Covina as well as the home of owner James Su on July 28 in addition to a mansion in Beverly Hills and the homes of San Bernardino City Councilman Alan Wapner and Curt Wagner, a member of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors.
The raids were the latest development federal investigations intensify into allegations of connections between city and county officials and intelligence agents for the People’s Republic of China.
Ex-Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang is awaiting sentencing after she pleaded guilty earlier this year to concealing her SGV-based propaganda work directed by the PRC intelligence community.
The Los Angeles Times reported Su contributed $500 to Wang’s campaign on Oct. 10, 2022, but a one-page disclosure document on the city’s website indicating Oct. 10 donations do not show a contribution from Su. A hyperlink to the contribution document with the online version of the Times story was inoperable Tuesday.
Cao did not respond to a request for comment on whether he knew if Su and EDI were registered agents of China and the specifics of the campaign services the company provided.
Su’s media company includes several businesses in the Los Angeles area, including the Chinese-language website iCity News and two radio stations. Su and EDI had to register as a foreign agent on Feb. 24, 2022, because EDI had printed the U.S. version of the Xinmin Evening News, which the U.S. State Department considered a “foreign mission” of the Chinese government.
Su’s attorney Andrew Cowan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
He told the Times in late July that his client is an American citizen who donated to a variety of campaigns across the political spectrum and does not know why the FBI served search warrants at his home and company headquarters. Cowan said that Hagman is the only individual connected with the properties searched with whom Su is familiar.
FBI agents also raided a 21,000-square-foot mansion in Beverly Hills at 613 N. Canon Drive on July 28. The home was sold by Kurdish Gen. Mansour Banzani to a Chinese mainland family in 2023 for $24.6 million, the Times reported. Two companies, one registered in Delaware, purchased the mansion.
As Tuesday’s raids unfolded, U.S. Rep. Norma Torres, D-Pomona, said she was “deeply troubled” about the FBI raids involving elected officials in San Bernardino County.
“I am awaiting further information, but our community has zero tolerance for any corruption at any level of our government,” Torres said in a statement.
Termed-out Arcadia Councilwoman and former Mayor April Verlato — a Republican running for Congress against Rep. Judy Chu, D-Pasadena, in the November election — was the first to point out Su and EDI’s presence in Cao’s campaign disclosures.
“Arcadia City Councilman Michael Cao used a Chinese propaganda mouthpiece for his campaign in 2022,” Verlato wrote in a mass email Saturday.
The email included separate photos of Cao and Wang with Su.
Arcadia’s Best, a blog published by termed-out Councilman and Mayor Sho Tay, took issue with elements of Verlato’s email blast.
“The email is presented as a public accountability report, but its structure more closely resembles election season opposition messaging,” according to an Aug. 9 post. “It uses a federal investigation involving other individuals, combines it with photographs of Cao at a public event and then invites readers to suspect wrongdoing that the email never establishes.”
According to Verlato, the photos she emailed were from an Aug. 24, 2024, event that was not on the City Council’s public calendar.
“I was on Arcadia City Council at this time (and) wasn’t invited to this event,” Verlato wrote. “At the last council meeting on July 21, council proclaimed they had no ties to any foreign government, but if they are going to events and not reporting the events they are attending as a representative of Arcadia, how are we to truly know?”
The Arcadia’s Best News Editorial Board retorted, “Public figures are entitled to criticize one another. They are not entitled to manufacture implications and then avoid responsibility by placing a question mark at the end. …
“Federal Foreign Agents Registration Act records concerning EDI Media may justify questions about the company’s disclosed work for a foreign principal,” the blog opined. “They do not automatically establish that every unrelated commercial customer also acted for that foreign principal.”
The post displayed photographs of Verlato “attending an EDI Media event and presenting … (an) Arcadia certificate on behalf of the city,” and suggested she is criticizing similar actions by Cao that she herself did during her council tenure.
Verlato said was unaware EDI was behind the event May 15, 2024, at the Sheraton hotel in San Gabriel.
“The event Arcadia’s Best included stating I was at and it was an EDI Media event was unbeknownst to me,” Verlato told HeySoCal.com. “I remember this event. I have photos from the event. I have the invite from the event. Nowhere did it claim to be an EDI Media event. …
“If this was an EDI Media event, they must have intentionally tried to keep it undisclosed,” Verlato added. “But it would explain why the consular general of China was there, which I found unusual.”
She said Arcadia’s Best made “a material misrepresentation in their article. I am sure there was an EDI Media event or 2 that I attended, however, at the event mentioned in Arcadia’s Best, I did not give a certificate to EDI Media or James Su,” according to Verlato. “The invite proclaimed it was an International Art Festival and I was told that there were Arcadia residents involved in it. I handed out certificates to whom I believed were artists who had organized the event.”
“The fair conclusion is that neither photograph proves improper conduct,” according to Arcadia’s Best. “Verlato’s selective use of one photograph while omitting the other demonstrates why her email should be viewed as political advocacy rather than an objective investigation.”
Verlato, who lost a bid two years ago for Chu’s congressional seat, said in early 2023 the FBI reached out to meet with the Arcadia City Council. She met with the FBI about foreign influence in local politics in mid-February 2023 at City Hall and again solo in September of that year at FBI offices in West Covina.
“I did not know or understand the depth of the attempts by the Chinese government to influence local electeds until after the raid on Eileen’s home, the arrest and indictment of her fiance Mike Sun” in December 2024.
About a month prior to Wang’s guilty plea in late May 2026, FBI agents searched Lancaster City Hall and the homes of two council members.
Details of that investigation were not available, but a source who has reviewed a warrant told the Times that authorities sought communications between city officials and the Chinese auto manufacturer BYD. The company runs a major bus manufacturing facility in Lancaster.