wynn resorts
America First Legal Foundation
Trump’s hardline immigration advisor Stephen Miller co-created the America First Legal Foundation (AFL) with Mark Meadows, which claims to give “the 234 new federal judges appointed by Donald Trump the chance to finally hold Washington accountable to the rule of law.” According to the**Washington Post**, the group "has weaponized the grievance politics embodied by Trump’s 'Make America Great Again' movement through dozens of federal lawsuits, challenging efforts to remedy racial disparities, support LGBTQ students and expand the pool of early voters." In the final weeks of the 2022 elections, AFL spent $4 million on inflammatory anti-transgender radio ads. Casino magnate Steve Wynn, who resigned as RNC finance chair amid allegations of sexual misconduct in 2018, is among AFL's donors, according to the *Post*.
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DN AN 2 25
:{We look at the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on press freedom, and how the media has responded with bended knee in some cases, with Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. The Trump administration has threatened journalists and media outlets for their coverage, and the Federal Communications Commission is investigating PBS and NPR over its funding sources. Meanwhile, a number of major news organizations face accusations of surrendering to Trump’s threats.
In December, ABC settled a defamation suit brought by Trump by making a $15 million donation to his future presidential library. CBS’s parent company Paramount is reportedly in talks to settle a multibillion-dollar lawsuit filed by Trump, who accused 60 Minutes of deceptively editing an interview with Kamala Harris. Trump initially sought $10 billion in the lawsuit and is now seeking $20 billion. “What I see here is media organizations that have the power to fight back against Trump but aren’t doing it. I think that’s a failure of courage,” says Jaffer. “Every time one of those media organizations settles a case, the next organization finds it more difficult to resist Trump.}:
AMY GOODMAN: As a constitutional crisis grows in Washington, we begin today’s show looking at the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on press freedom. Last week, the interim U.S. Attorney in Washington Edward Martin threatened to prosecute anyone, including journalists, who, quote, “target” or, quote, “impede” Elon Musk and DOGE — that’s the Department of Government Efficiency. Martin’s letter came a day after Musk claimed it was a crime to identify the young computer engineers who have helped him gain access to highly sensitive information at agencies across Washington.
Meanwhile, the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, has opened an investigation into San Francisco-based KCBS over the radio station’s reporting on recent immigration raids. The FCC has also opened a broader investigation of NPR and PBS and their practice of airing underwriting announcements.
On Friday, Donald Trump openly called for The Washington Post to fire longtime columnist Eugene Robinson after he accused Trump of trampling the Constitution.
Meanwhile, a number of major news organizations face accusations of already bending a knee to Trump. In December, ABC settled a defamation suit brought by Trump by making a $15 million donation to his future presidential library.
CBS’s parent company Paramount Global is reportedly in talks to settle a multibillion-dollar lawsuit filed by Trump, who accused 60 Minutes of deceptively editing an interview with Kamala Harris. Trump initially sought $10 billion in the lawsuit, but he’s upped it now to $20 billion. Last week, CBS took the unusual step of handing over its unedited tapes to the FCC. While the tapes showed no wrongdoing on CBS’s part, many believe Paramount might still settle the lawsuit. This all is happening as Paramount seeks federal approval for its $8 billion merger with Skydance Media.
We’re joined right now by Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. His recent New York Timesopinion piece is headlined “This Is Not a Moment to Settle with Trump.”
AMY GOODMAN: So, we just went through some of the cases, but if you can go through them in depth and explain what is happening here? Is the media obeying in advance?
JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah. I mean, that’s how I see it. I see a kind of failure of courage among the largest and most powerful media organizations in the country. You know, you started with the ABC settlement. This is a case that arose out of George Stephanopoulos saying on TV that President Trump had been found liable for rape, when in fact the jury had found him liable for sexual assault. Trump sued, claiming that he had been defamed. I don’t think that there —
AMY GOODMAN: And let’s be clear: It was the judge who said, in common parlance, this would be rape.
JAMEEL JAFFER: That’s right. That’s right. I don’t think that Trump had any chance of winning that lawsuit. If ABC had contested it, ABC would have been protected by the New York Times v. Sullivan rule. New York Times v. Sullivan is a 60-year-old case that gives citizens broad power to — or, broad latitude to criticize government officials, makes it very difficult for public officials to recover in defamation actions. I don’t think there’s any way that ABC would have lost that case. But they settled the case.
Second one is Meta’s settlement with Trump. This is over Meta’s decision or Facebook and Instagram’s decision to deplatform Trump after January 6th. Trump sued, claiming that his First Amendment rights had been violated. This, I think, is a totally frivolous case. There’s no way that Trump would have won that case against Meta, but Meta settled it, as well, for $25 million — again, all going to Trump’s presidential library.
And then, finally, this reported CBS settlement, or possible CBS settlement, with Trump over the action — over the case that involved the editing of this Kamala Harris interview. I don’t think that CBS edited that interview in any unusual way at all. The kind of editing they did is routine for journalism, for media organizations. Trump knows that. Again, no chance that Trump would have won that case, but CBS is reportedly thinking about settling it.
So, what I see here is media organizations that have the power to fight back against Trump but aren’t doing it. I think that’s a failure of courage, and it has implications for those particular media organizations, because I think it affects their credibility and their prestige. But it has larger press freedom implications, as well, because every time one of those media organizations settles a case, the next organization finds it more difficult to resist Trump. And this is a moment in which we need these organizations to hold the powerful to account, hold Trump to account, and this is exactly what they should not be doing.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jameel, what about this latest story this week about the FCC investigating a San Francisco —
JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — radio station, KCBS, for its coverage of immigration enforcement in San Jose?
JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah. I mean, here, too, I think you see the Trump administration trying to use its regulatory authorities in a way that chills press freedom, chills legitimate reporting. No question here that that radio station was within its rights to report what it did. And what Trump is trying to do or what the FCC is trying to do here is chill not just that radio station, but other radio stations and other media organizations, from engaging in reporting that is inconvenient to the administration.
I mean, I mentioned the CBS case. You know, another aspect of that case involves the FCC, with the FCC having demanded from CBS that it turn over unedited transcripts of its interview with Kamala Harris. And I don’t think in another —
AMY GOODMAN: And they released them.
JAMEEL JAFFER: And they released them. And they released them. I don’t think in another — in any other era a news organization would have just turned over those transcripts without at least trying to get a judge to narrow the request or look at the transcripts in camera before turning them over. But CBS just turned them over.
And, you know, I think that there’s a real risk here that, on paper, we’re going to have all the First Amendment rights in the world. The First Amendment is going to look great on paper. But the organizations that we need to assert their First Amendment rights, to defend press freedom, are increasingly just not doing it.
I mean, I’ve named a few of the settlements, but even before we got to the settlements, there were the L.A. Times and The Washington Post, which quashed editorials that would have been — that would have provoked Trump. This happened before the election. Then there were the Big Tech companies that all made million-dollar donations to Trump’s inaugural fund. You know, I think what we’re seeing is media organizations, including social media organizations, lining up to ingratiate themselves with President Trump. And that is an extremely troubling thing at this particular moment.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, of course, it’s not just media organizations. Universities. Talk about the free speech rights that are endangered, increasingly endangered, at universities by the Trump administration, for instance, threatening to deport pro-Palestinian students.
JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah, I mean, I think this is — it’s a larger issue across society. Many of the institutions that we need to serve as checks on government power at a moment like this are not doing their jobs.
Now, this question about, you know, in what circumstances can the government deport noncitizens for exercising their First Amendment rights, I think, is a hugely significant question. And I want people to understand that the First Amendment protects noncitizen students at American universities just like it protects everybody else. The government cannot constitutionally deport people simply because they have exercised their First Amendment rights, simply because they have criticized a war overseas or criticized our government or criticized another government. Those are not constitutionally permissible justifications for deporting somebody.
So, you know — and you don’t have to take my word for it, because a couple years ago, the Knight Institute, my institute, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Biden administration, and we were able to get two memos, two legal memos, in which the Trump administration had considered its authority to engage in these kinds of deportations based on First Amendment activity. And Trump administration lawyers wrote memos that acknowledged that noncitizens at universities in the United States are protected by the First Amendment and that deporting them on the basis of their speech would almost certainly be unconstitutional.
AMY GOODMAN: And then, Jameel Jaffer, talk about what happened Friday night with the casino magnate Steve Wynn asking the Supreme Court to revisit the Times v. Sullivan defamation rule, the Supreme Court decision, one of the two most important press freedom cases.
JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah, so, I mentioned New York Times v. Sullivan already. This has been a campaign by some conservatives over the last few years to try to get the Supreme Court to narrow or overrule New York Times v. Sullivan, which would be a very big deal because it’s The New York Times v. Sullivan, more than any other case, that protects our ability to criticize government officials, which is core to our democracy. And this —
AMY GOODMAN: What was it established under, New York Times v. Sullivan? What case was that?
JAMEEL JAFFER: So, it’s called New York Times v. Sullivan. It’s a case involving — The New York Times was sued by a Southern police official who was concerned about civil rights activism in the South and complained, in particular, about an ad in The New York Times that he said — he said accurately — was inaccurate. The ad included some inaccuracies in it. And he said, because the ad included inaccuracies, The New York Times was liable. I think it was for $500,000, which at the time would have been crushing liability even for The New York Times. And if he had won that case, other news organizations reporting on the civil rights movement would have been crushed, as well. But the Supreme Court said, if you’re criticizing government officials, you have to have broad latitude, even to get things wrong. So, unless the public official can show what’s called actual malice, so unless the public official can show that the newspaper or the writer recklessly published false information or deliberately published false information, there’s no recovery possible. The First Amendment forecloses recovery.
So, now some conservatives are pushing to get the Supreme Court to overrule that decision. I think it’s a misguided campaign, even, you know, if you want the things that these conservatives want. I think this is going to backfire on them. But this cert petition that was filed on Friday night, this request that the Supreme Court hear the case, is another effort in this longer campaign to get the Supreme Court to either scale back or overrule New York Times v. Sullivan.
AMY GOODMAN: Jameel Jaffer, thanks so much for being with us, director of the Knight —
JAMEEL JAFFER: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: — First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. We’ll link to your piece in The New York Times, “This Is Not a Moment to Settle with Trump.”
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an common dr 822
Leaked audio obtained this week by Politico revealed that billionaire casino magnate and GOP megadonor Steve Wynn recently offered Republicans a bit of messaging advice as they attempt to win back control of the Senate: Amplify the lies about Democratic tax policies.
During a Wednesday conference call hosted by the Republican National Committee, which is seeking to wrangle big-money donors amid internal concerns that the party's Senate chances are dimming, Wynn recommended "hard-hitting" ads with scripts warning ominously: "They're coming after you if you're a waiter, if you're a bartender, if you're anybody with a cash business... they're coming after you."
Wynn, a once highly prominent figure who has been accused of sexual assault and illegal lobbying, didn't specify which Democratic tax policies he was referencing. But Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, told the Washington Post Thursday that Wynn's suggested messaging resembles GOP attacks on increased funding for the Internal Revenue Service, which Republican lawmakers have systematically deprived of resources for years—a major boon to rich tax-dodgers and large corporations.
"The lack of resources prevents the IRS from ensuring that large and sprawling operations pay their full tax bill," Rosenthal said in an interview with the Post's Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman. "The point of increased enforcement is to pursue these businesses."
Wynn's advice came after the GOP had already launched hysterical attacks on the $80 billion in IRS funding included in the newly enacted Inflation Reduction Act, which passed both chambers of Congress this month without a single Republican vote. In floor debate over the package, House Republicans falsely claimed the funding would enable "robbery" by gun-wielding IRS agents.
In reality, the money will go toward ensuring the agency is capable of mundane tasks—such as answering phone calls—as well as giving it the capacity and resources to audit ultra-rich taxpayers whose returns have gone under-examined for years.[twt]
earlier this year, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse published an analysis showing that the IRS audited low-income wage earners at a rate five times higher than everyone else in Fiscal Year 2021, a trend the agency has blamed on the higher costs of auditing wealthier taxpayers.
In a letter to the IRS chief earlier this month, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen specifically instructed the tax agency to use the new funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to "increase equity in the tax system by enforcing the tax laws against those high-earners, large corporations, and complex partnerships who today do not pay what they owe."
As Rosenthal put it to the Post,"Wynn is trying to push Republicans to scare the little fish into thinking the IRS is targeting them, when in fact the IRS has pledged to target the big fish."
Sargent and Waldman argued in a column Thursday that "it's pretty revealing for Wynn to be urging Republicans to attack those policies by arguing that their real victims will be waiters and bartenders."
"Democrats should jump on this," they wrote.
According to Politico, the 36-minute conference call also featured Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel begging rich donors to inject funding into Senate races as GOP leaders openly raise doubts about the party's prospects of retaking the upper chamber in November.
Recent polling in the key battleground states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, for example, shows that Democratic candidates John Fetterman and Mandela Barnes have opened up leads against their Republican opponents.
"Please help us invest in these Senate races specifically," McDaniel told donors on the call. "Give to any of these Senate candidates, all of these Senate candidates if you can, so all of them can be on TV."
Politico reported that Wynn "asked whether there are any dark-money nonprofits that contributors could give to."
Donors, he said, "are self-conscious for reasons that are personal to them, business people and folks like that."
hayes recs
Constellation of Anti-Voting Groups Threaten Democracy
By Marc Elias
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August 18, 2022
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https://www.democracydocket.com/news/a-constellation-of-anti-voting-groups-threaten-democracy/
republican leaders of the anti-voting movement recently held a “gourmet dinner” at an “undisclosed location” to discuss my voting rights litigation. The event was billed as the inaugural leadership dinner for a group called the Honest Elections Project. I was not invited to attend.
There is a constellation of well-funded, right-wing groups that use the legal and political system to make voting more difficult and free and fair elections less likely. They range from mere vote suppressors to full-on election deniers. Most oppose expanding voting rights and support strict voting laws. Many seek to gut the Voting Rights Act entirely; others want it interpreted so narrowly as to be ineffective. None of these organizations supported Congress’ efforts to enact new pro-voter legislation.
These right-wing groups work closely with the RNC and with state legislatures to advance anti-voting legislation.
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The American Constitutional Rights Union, Foundation for Government Accountability, Judicial Watch, Lawyers Democracy Fund, Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) and Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections are just a few of the groups fighting against voting rights in court. America First Legal Foundation, Election Integrity Network, Heritage Foundation and True the Vote also support anti-democracy legal efforts. The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council advances model anti-voting legislation for state legislatures.
We recently got a preview of how these groups will operationalize their legal efforts in court in the future. Earlier this year, a Florida federal judge struck down most of the state’s “Big Lie” voter suppression law. In doing so, the court found that Florida Republicans had intentionally discriminated against Black voters and had violated the constitutional rights of Floridians seeking to participate in the democratic process. On appeal, six national anti-voting groups filed separate “friend of the court” briefs opposing the lower court’s decision — in addition to the briefs by the state defendants and the Republican Party.
For many years, the Republican National Committee (RNC) was legally barred from participating in election monitoring or voter suppression efforts as a consequence of the GOP’s ugly history of targeting minority voters in the 1980s. When that bar was lifted in 2017, the RNC picked up where it had left off and ran so-called “election integrity” programs with state parties.
These anti-voting legal groups offer a path for Republicans to wield majority political power without majority support.
Now, in the post-Trump era, the RNC directly partners with voter suppression groups and efforts that two years ago would have been unthinkable. The party’s dismal court results following the 2020 election coupled with MAGA supporters’ distrust of the party establishment has left the GOP operating in the penumbra of the current stars of the election denier and voter suppression movement.
It’s not just what these groups do, but who runs them.
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On PILF’s board of directors, for example, are Cleta Mitchell and John Eastman,both of whom served as lawyers for former President Donald Trump. Mitchell participated in the infamous telephone call during which Trump demanded that the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) find 11,000 votes and declare Trump the winner. Eastman, who has been in the news recently for having a search warrant executed against him, helped craft the January 2021 insurrection plan.
The Honest Elections Project — the host of the secret dinner — was formed in February 2020 and is connected to Federalist Society founder Leonard Leo.
The newest of these groups, Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, was co-founded by former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr (R) and Karl Rove, who served as former senior advisor and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.Casino billionaire Steve Wynn provides the organization’s financial backing as its finance chair.
This group is notably more competent and well-resourced than the legal buffoonery who led Trump’s post-election antics. Though I am no fan of Barr, he is unlikely to hire lawyers who claim Hugo Chávez rigged elections from the grave or threaten to release the mythological Kraken. With Rove on its board as well, Barr is almost certainly not going to hold press conferences in a landscaping parking lot.
Notably, the infrastructure on the right is eclipsing the organizations on the left.
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Historically, most organizations and resources dedicated to protecting the right to vote were connected to the left. Today there are still many important civil rights and voting rights organizations that bring litigation to protect the right to vote. Their work is invaluable. But most of those groups have broader portfolios that extend beyond voting rights and have insufficient resources to meet their growing needs.
What is notable about the right wing’s approach is the scope and interconnected nature of their legal efforts to undermine voting rights and free and fair elections.
Right-wing legal groups work in tandem with Republican legislatures dominated by election deniers. These organizations can help generate the most effective voter suppression policies that Republicans turn into laws. When those laws are challenged in court, the conservative legal groups then help defend them.
This brings me back to the “gourmet dinner” at an “undisclosed location” that I was not invited to attend. The right wing holds these events and funds these groups because they know that they cannot win fair elections. These anti-voting legal groups offer a path for Republicans to wield majority political power without majority support. They know that they lost in 2020. They are embarrassed that Trump was routed in post-election litigation. Some are upset that his coup failed on Jan. 6.
They set up new groups, hold secret dinners and create new voter suppression laws hoping that we will give up. I’m not sure what gave them that impression. After Trump was defeated in 2020, his team fought dozens of times in court — and lost. We didn’t give up then, and we certainly aren’t giving up now.
NEXT UP
Conservatives Have Been Packing the Courts for Years
We deserve a forward-thinking judiciary filled with movement lawyers who want to see progress for our nation.
ref
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/ex-trump-ag-barr-others-launch-republican-backed-election-law-group-2022-07-21/
no lnx
Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections was co-founded by Karl Rove, hotelier Steve Wynn and lawyer Bobby Burchfield
The group opposes courts intervening in state election laws
and has already filed briefs in court cases over new voting restrictions
(Reuters) - Prominent Republicans including former U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Thursday launched a new legal group they say is aimed at defending state legislatures’ right to set election laws.
The nonprofit group, Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, is also co-founded by longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove, hotel magnate and GOP donor Steve Wynn and attorney Bobby Burchfield, who last year resigned from the law firm King & Spalding.
Burchfield told Reuters Thursday that the group was created in response to expanding court fights over election laws. It has already filed two briefs in election law cases backing state legislatures' ability to change voting rules.
“We do not think the courts should be setting the rules for elections. We believe that’s the province of state legislatures,” Burchfield said.
He said the nonprofit is not a “foil” to Democratic lawyers like Marc Elias, who left law firm Perkins Coie last year to start his own practice regularly litigating over election laws.
The group is not affiliated with former President Donald Trump and does not support particular candidates, Burchfield said. He said the groups' members reject claims made by some other conservatives that the 2020 election is illegitimate due to mass voter fraud.
Elias on Thursday told Reuters he believes the new organization is "fundamentally about making voting harder and opposing voting rights." He said that the state laws the group defends are falsely premised on the idea that fraud is rampant in U.S. elections.
One of the group's briefs, filed in June before the Montana Supreme Court, supports reinstating several new voting laws blocked by a judge in March, including ones eliminating same-day voter registration and heightening voter identification requirements in the state. The court in May suspended that ruling but has not issued a final decision.
Represented by lawyers from Jones Day, the group also filed a brief Tuesday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit supporting a Republican-backed Florida law that restricts the use of drop boxes and third-party organizations' ability to collect voter registration forms. The court in May temporarily reinstated those measures after a lower court judge said they were racially discriminatory.
Wynn is the group's finance chair. It will also help others with a similar agenda through financial aid or "intellectual capital," by connecting them to lawyers, Burchfield said.
Burchfield last year represented the Republican National Committee and Trump’s reelection campaign in a pre-election legal challenge to North Carolina extending the deadline for receiving mail-in ballots in the 2020 race. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the case.
He was previously an outside ethics adviser to the Trump Organization but said Thursday he no longer holds that role.
Thomson Reuters
Jacqueline Thomsen, based in Washington, D.C., covers legal news related to policy, the courts and the legal profession. Follow her on Twitter at @jacq_thomsen and email her at jacqueline.thomsen@thomsonreuters.com.
ref
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article232973237.html
no lnx vid 10 min
chinese billionaire Guo Wengui belongs to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, and has railed against China’s communist government. He is now one of China’s most-wanted, accused of myriad crimes by the Chinese government, including paying bribes and sexual assault. BY MARTA OLIVER CRAVIOTTO | SARAH BLASKEY
MORE FROM THE SERIES
Trump Tourism: Access for Sale
The Miami Herald is investigating how U.S. President Donald J. Trump has become a favorite target of a little-known Chinese industry peddling access to the rich and powerful. At the center of this “Trump Tourism” is Cindy Yang, a former Asian day spa owner, who sold access to Mar-a-Lago and the White House, raising concerns about national security. Read more:
EXPAND ALL]
A high-profile Chinese fugitive — who belongs to President Donald Trump’s exclusive South Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, and has railed against China’s communist government — is accused of being a spy for that very regime, according to new documents filed in a federal court case in New York.
Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, who also goes by Miles Kwok, fled to the United States four years ago after learning an associate had been arrested on corruption charges. He is now one of China’s most-wanted, accused of myriad crimes by the Chinese government, including paying bribes and sexual assault. He maintains his innocence, saying the charges are politically motivated.
Guo, who made his money in real estate, has long promoted himself as a dissident being hunted by the Chinese government for his opposition to the ruling Chinese Communist Party. He is currently seeking political asylum in the United States, where he reportedly avoided deportation by the Trump administration after the president learned Guo was a member of Mar-a-Lago.
Now, filings in a civil case, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, suggest Guo may not be the dissident he claims. “Instead, Guo Wengui was, and is, a dissident-hunter, propagandist, and agent in the service of the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party,” according to federal court papers filed on Friday.
The Chinese spy allegations against Guo surfaced last week in a contract dispute — rife with international and political intrigue — between a Hong Kong-based company, Eastern Profit Corporation Limited, and anArlington, Va., research firm, Strategic Vision US, LLC
[A photo shows Guo Wengui walking his dog outside Mar-a-Lago in late December 2018 as anti-Trump protesters pulled up in a boat behind him. COURTESY CLAUDE TAYLOR]
Strategic filed a counterclaim not only against Eastern Profit but also against Guo, alleging he is actually a Chinese government spy whose “origin story is untrue.”
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In the counterclaim, Strategic Vision called Guo a “representative” of Eastern Profit, and accused the billionaire of giving the research firm a thumb drive loaded with malware. Strategic claimed Guo was seeking sensitive information on Chinese nationals who were actually assisting the U.S. government’s counterintelligence efforts.
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“Strategic Vision proved its counterclaim with mountains of publicly available information,” said the research firm’s attorney, Edward Greim, in a statement provided to the Miami Herald.
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“[The evidence] showed that Mr. Guo was detained in China on the date he claims to have arrived in the U.S. in early 2015, that he sent hundreds of millions of dollars back and forth between China and the U.S. for years after Chinese authorities supposedly starting seizing his assets, and that he’s used scores of lawsuits to engage in seemingly sham disputes against Chinese regime-connected entities while simultaneously filing very real lawsuits against legitimate Chinese dissidents to destroy their reputations and drain their finances.”
The allegations against Guo — that he’s some sort of double agent uncovering real dissidents for the Chinese government — come as the FBI continues to investigate possible Chinese espionage at Mar-a-Lago. The ongoing federal probe gained new momentum when, on March 30, Yujing Zhang, a 33-year-old Chinese national, was arrested and charged with trespassing and lying to a federal agent after she tried to enter Mar-a-Lago with various cover stories.
According to authorities, she was carrying a trove of electronics, including a thumb drive authorities claimed was infested with malware. Recent secret filings in the Zhang case suggest federal authorities have information about Zhang that could endanger national security, should anyone but the judge view it.
Zhang had initially bought a ticket to an event at Mar-a-Lago that was being promoted by South Florida massage parlor entrepreneur Li “Cindy” Yang. The event was canceled after the Herald revealed Yang was selling access to the president and his family through Mar-a-Lago events that she promoted on Chinese social media. Zhang was aware of the cancellation before arriving in Florida. Now, both Zhang and Yang are at the center of the broader federal counterintelligence effort in South Florida. Yang is also the focus of a separate campaign finance investigation by the Department of Justice.
[Gu_fitted.jpeg
Guo Wengui poses for a photo inside Mar-a-Lago, the president’s club, where he is reportedly a member. CLAUDE TAYLOR]
It is unclear whether Guo is in any way involved in the counterintelligence investigation.
Top Senate Democrats are renewing calls for federal authorities to assess potential security risks posed by Mar-a-Lago’s status as a club where $200,000 buys a membership with nearly unlimited access to the president’s South Florida home.
“I do not know the guy at all,” longtime Mar-a-Lago member George Lombardi told the Miami Herald. “But I can say that the events that took place in Mar-a-Lago months ago reflect the fact that there are a few individuals that may live in the USA but they have pledged their alliance to other countries.” Still, Lombardi said he was not worried by the news.
The Trump Organization, which runs Mar-a-Lago, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Guo was photographed at Mar-a-Lago in December 2018, walking his beloved tiny white dog around the grounds. At the time, the president’s wife, Melania, and other members of the family were popping in and out of the club to attend various holiday events. President Trump was in Washington at the time due to the government shutdown.
The picture of Guo, his dog, and an unidentified female companion was snapped by Claude Taylor, an anti-Trump activist, who was driving a boat up the Intracoastal Waterway. On board Taylor’s boat was a large inflatable rat, with hair and suit that made it look like Donald Trump.
“We were just having fun, creating mischief,” Taylor told the Herald.
As he blasted a classic rock song — “I Fought the Law” by the Clash — Taylor saw Guo and the female companion walking the dog near the club’s seawall. While Taylor snapped photos of Guo, the billionaire started taking pictures of the boat.
Taylor logged onto Mar-a-Lago’s unsecured guest Wi-Fi, and a while later was contacted by someone inside the club. He didn’t know who it was. The contact sent one photo of Guo inside Mar-a-Lago reading a newspaper, and another with Guo standing with Taylor’s rat boat behind him. Taylor assumed the latter was taken by Guo’s female companion.
“He wants as many people as possible to know he is a member in good standing,” Taylor remembers thinking at the time. “He’s a fugitive from justice who has asylum claims and he’s using as leverage his association with Mar-a-Lago to bolster his asylum claim.”
[IMG_5007.jpeg
Chinese fugitive billionaire Guo Wengui was photographed by activist Claude Taylor as Guo walked his dog outside Mar-a-Lago in late December 2018. CLAUDE TAYLOR]
“Mr. Guo is the most wanted dissident worldwide by the Chinese Communist Party and has been their most outspoken and vitriolic critic since his arrival in the United States,” according to Guo’s attorney, Podhaskie.
The Chinese government has apparently gone to considerable lengths to try to bring Guo back to mainland China.
On May 24, 2017, several Chinese officials went to Guo’s home — a $67 million Manhattan penthouse — in an effort to persuade him to drop his activism and return to China, according to an audio recording of the meeting reported by the Wall Street Journal. The officials were traveling in the United States on visas that did not permit official business, prompting a behind-the-scenes skirmish between the FBI and State Department on whether to arrest them as they left the country, according to the Journal. In the end, the State Department’s fears of sparking an international incident won out, and the Chinese officials left the country without incident.
Around the same time, Republican National Committee Finance Chairman Steve Wynn, a casino magnate and longtime associate of Trump’s with business interests in Macau, a special administrative region of China, reportedly hand-delivered a letter to the president on behalf of the Chinese government. It requested that the United States deport Guo back to China. (Wynn denied the story through his lawyer, when asked for comment by the Journal.) Trump appeared ready to grant China’s request until his aides dissuaded him by telling him that Guo was a member of Mar-a-Lago, according to the Journal.
Guo is known to be one of China’s most eccentric billionaires and has spent his life mired in controversy. Guo’s official Facebook page is filled with videos of himself demonstrating his various workout routines and anti-Chinese Communist Party content — like one recent video in which he interviews former senior Trump advisor Steve Bannon on U.S.-Chinese relations over dinner.
The unlikely duo met while Bannon worked in the White House as Trump’s chief strategist, according to Bannon, who spoke at a news conference last year where he announced he was joining Guo’s effort to expose Chinese corruption around the globe.
During the news conference, Guo and Bannon alleged that the Chinese government was involved in the death of another Chinese billionaire, Wang Jian, former chairman of the HNA Group, who fell to his death on July 4, 2018, while vacationing in the south of France. French officials ruled the death an accident and claimed there was no evidence pointing to suicide.
However, Guo said at the news conference that he had commissioned a private investigation into Wang’s fall that turned up several anomalies, including how his bodyguards reacted by giving the dying man facial acupuncture.
Together, Guo and Bannon launched the Rule of Law Foundation, which they said would collect evidence in cases of deaths like Wang’s, according to the South China Morning Post.
“Mr. Guo has consistently emphasized his one goal: to take down the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]. As such, he has put all of his available resources to that end — to take down this murderous dictatorship and free his fellow countrymen in China,” Guo’s lawyer told the Herald.
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Chinese woman arrested at Mar-a-Lago is accused of lying
Yujing Zhang, the Chinese woman arrested on March 30, 2019, trying to enter President Donald Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, is charged with making false statements to federal agents and illegally entering a restricted area. BY META VIERS
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