An international scandal has emerged on the left with the revelation that the brother-in-law of a key Democratic senator has been a frequent point of contact for Chinese Communist Party (CCP) representatives visiting the United States, even going so far as to lease office space to Chinese diplomats.
For context, Anthony “Tony” Malkin is the brother-in-law of Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and is the head of Empire State Realty Trust, Inc., a publicly-traded, self-managed commercial and residential real estate investment trust (REIT) based in New York City. Tony Malkin, who is the brother of Sen. Blumenthal’s wife, has reportedly met with multiple Chinese consuls general over the last 15 years, all the while leasing office space to major arms of the Chinese government and media. On March 27, 2025, press coverage began outing Tony for his involvement with major CCP figures.
In addition, Tony Malkin was the subject of a 2011 profile published by China Daily, a state-run media outlet. In the piece, Malkin was quoted as saying that he had “recently visited China to find tenants, hoping to benefit from the previous flood of Chinese buyers of commercial housing who are now spilling into the office rental market.”
Furthermore, the profile revealed the specifics of the leases Malkin had secured with Chinese companies in the Empire State Building, including “People’s Daily Online, Air China Ltd, and PCCW-HKT DataCom Services Ltd, a Hong Kong-based telecommunications company, for office space in the landmark building in New York.”
According to Fox News coverage of the scandal, an Empire State Realty Trust (ESRT) spokesperson confirmed that “People’s Daily Online left its space at the Empire State Building nearly a decade ago.” However, the ESRT representative went on to confirm that several CCP-affiliated companies remain. He told Fox News, “Air China, which is defined as a publicly traded company that is partially owned by the Chinese government, has an office at the Empire State Building, but is only about 3,000 square feet in the 7.8 million square feet of our office portfolio.”
In addition, Fox’s coverage of the incident verified that Li & Fong Ltd., a large-scale supply chain management company headed by a chairman who reportedly graduated from Harvard and Northwestern University, is “still currently a tenant of the ESRT, according to financial data.”
Adding to the depth of the scandal, press accounts verified that Tony Malkin launched a “China business desk” in an effort to gain more business from Chinese companies, along with “cooperating with Chinese tour groups” to arrange visits to the Empire State Building. However, an ESRT spokesperson told Fox News that the REIT denied these allegations, saying it was “not something Mr. Malkin or Malkin holdings ever did.”
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When Sen. Blumenthal was asked to comment on his brother-in-law’s questionable business ties to the CCP, his office reportedly responded, saying that he “has absolutely nothing to do with any of this.” The senator’s spokesperson, Maria McElwain, defended Blumenthal, telling Fox News, “Senator Blumenthal’s wife is one of literally thousands of shareholders in a publicly traded real estate company, and just like the rest of those shareholders, she doesn’t have control over anything this company does.”
Watch Tony Malkin discuss “the future of the US real estate market”:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video