He took down Andrew Cuomo. Now Jensen Huang is in his crosshairs
But among his most defining cases was New York Attorney General Letitia James’ investigation into sexual harassment allegations against then-Governor Andrew Cuomo, which led to his 2021 resignation.
Key points
- The former acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York was tapped to investigate whether Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was the target of a Chinese espionage campaign, following Huang’s bombshell admission Sunday that the chief executive had an extramarital affair with a woman alleged to be a Chinese spy.
- Shares in Nvidia have dropped 10% since Huang’s admission, knocking $500 billion off the company’s market value and stoking worries about the future of a company that underpins an AI financing buildout that has ensnared most of the global financial system.
- His former colleagues describe Kim as dogged, citing his time at the Southern District in 2013, under Attorney Preet Bharara, where Kim pursued a successful case against disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner and briefly ran the Southern District after Trump fired Bharara.
In his first stint as a federal prosecutor, Kim took on mob boss John “Junior” Gotti in a federal racketeering trial, trying him for the kidnapping of future New York mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa.
Additional details
- It’s unclear how far Nvidia’s board will let Kim roam, but the board has already drummed up corporate governance concerns: The unusually long-tenured board lacks the experience and stature typically found at companies as large as Nvidia’s and has let Huang run the company with no clear successor and more than 50 direct reports.
- Cuomo’s office was “rife with bullying, fear and intimidation,” Kim said when announcing his findings.
- Mob bosses Kim began his career at New York’s Southern District more than two decades ago, working in the organized crime unit before leaving for Cleary Gottlieb in 2006.
- The company abruptly changed tack on Sunday, when Huang wrote a letter to employees admitting to the affair and announcing a plan to initiate an independent probe.
- A tangled web Huang, a close confidant of US President Donald Trump, has pushed Nvidia to take stakes in hundreds of companies across the AI boom it supplies.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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