The recent, widely reported arrest of a Chinese national who illicitly made her way onto Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate turns out to have “ramped up” an ongoing investigation of “possible Chinese espionage that began in South Florida in late 2018,” reports the Miami Herald.
“The president of the United States is probably the number one intelligence target. Donald Trump is very, very connected to Mar-a-Lago, so Mar-a-Lago then becomes a very important intelligence target,” David Kris, an assistant attorney general for national security in the Obama administration, told the Herald.
One figure in the investigation is Li “Cindy” Yang, a South Florida businesswoman whose enterprises include selling Chinese business people access to Trump via events held at Mar-a-Lago.
That brought her in contact with Chinese-born Xinyue “Daniel” Lou, described by the Herald as “a United States-based promoter for the Chinese Communist Party” — and an official fundraiser for Trump.
Like Yang, Lou is a U.S. citizen.
He is “an avid Trump supporter” who contracted with the Republican National Committee (RNC) to raise money for Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, the Herald says, adding that Lou’s support for Trump “appears more pragmatic than ideological.”
All this takes place despite Trump’s trade war with China, his recent vow that communism’s “days are numbered” and his public contempt for Democrats who show “any hint of sympathy toward socialism,” the newspaper says.
“It’s a strange-bedfellows tale with national security implications,” says the Herald. “Trump needed to fill seats at private galas and campaign events, while Chinese capitalists wanted to cozy up to the American businessman-turned-president — an interest encouraged by a communist government looking for access.
“Out of this marriage of supply and demand emerged a tacitly Chinese state-endorsed gray market selling tickets to Trump-related events to Chinese business people,” the newspaper says.
Lou told the Herald the RNC “advised him not to comment on his fundraising activities for the committee, his association with Yang, or his previous activities in conjunction with the Communist Party.”
As high-level fundraisers, “Yang and Lou have brought dozens of guests to events where Trump, his family and top Republican advisers were present,” according to the Herald’s analysis of social media accounts. “Their efforts have been celebrated both by the RNC and event planners at Mar-a-Lago.”
While stories of Russian spying and meddling in the 2016 election have received widespread U.S. media coverage, according to a recent Wired Magazine article, “Chinese agents have stolen enough technology secrets to catapult the nation into the 21st Century as an up-and-coming global superpower,” the newspaper says.
The 33-year-old Chinese woman arrested on Mar. 30 at the Trump estate used a non-existent event supposedly taking place there as cover. Secret Service agents who searched her hotel room found multiple USB thumb drives, a device to detect hidden cameras and thousands of dollars worth of U.S. and Chinese currency. She’s charged with unlawfully entering a restricted area and lying to law enforcement agents and is due for trial May 28 in Fort Lauderdale.
Whatever her status, not all Chinese “agents” are of the classic cloak-and-dagger variety.
Under Chinese law, all Chinese citizens and corporation are required to cooperate with the government’s intelligence service, which, the Herald says, “could mean simply providing a verbal account of who attended a particular event, or handing over photos from events, emails or other information.”
Lou has signed on with the RNC to continue raising money for the Trump campaign for at least another year.
“An RNC official, speaking on background, declined to answer questions about if or how volunteer fundraisers like Lou are vetted for potential conflicts or associations with foreign governments,” the Herald says.
