Mar-a-lago membership benefit: No deportation
TRUMP DECIDES NOT TO DEPORT DISSIDENT AFTER LEARNING HE’S A MAR-A-LAGO MEMBER
Once again, the president’s business ties have tangled the U.S.’s relationship with a crucial ally.
BY ISOBEL THOMPSON
OCTOBER 24, 2017 4:30 PM
Pangu Plaza, a torch-shaped landmark building near the Birds Nest stadium in Beijing, developed by Guo Wengui. On April 19, China's foreign ministry said that Interpol has issued a "red notice" seeking his arrest.
By Zhang Peng/LightRocket via Getty Images.
Donald Trump’s presidency has often resembled the reality television world from which he emerged. When it was time to nominate a Supreme Court justice, he flew the two finaliststo Washington to build suspense. He has treated monumental decisions on such questions as whether to certify the Iran nuclear framework or who should lead the Federal Reservewith all the seriousness of a Bachelorette promo. But few of his escapades have been as screen-worthy as one starring Guo Wengui, a billionaire Chinese dissident dubbed the “Che Guevara of Chinese crony capitalism,” a cohort of Chinese officials who infiltrated Trump’s New York penthouse using a fluffed set of visas and a letter from the Chinese government, hand-delivered to the president by Republican National Committee finance chairman Steve Wynn, a casino tycoon with links to the Chinese-controlled gambling haven Macau.
As The Wall Street Journal detailed this week, Guo, who built a real-estate empire in Beijing, fled China in 2014 after learning that a state security associate was about to be arrested. With an application for asylum in the U.S. pending, Guo has settled into a $67.5 million apartment overlooking Central Park, which is reportedly furnished with crystal chandeliers and a large Lego model of London Bridge. While Beijing has accused Guo of involvement in multiple major crimes including bribery, kidnapping, and rape, he has torn a page from Trump’s playbook and styled himself as a maverick, broadcasting sensational claims of official Chinese corruption via webcasts, tweets, and a litany of emojis.
Enormously rich, intent on growing his personal brand, and boasting a massive Twitter following, Guo is a fitting modern antagonist for the Chinese government, which so far has been unable to recall him due to the lack of an extradition treaty between China and the U.S.—a point of contention between the two nations. Since 2014, China has ramped up its efforts to capture fugitives accused of corruption via Operation “Fox Hunt,”, whose agents have been known to pressure a target’s relatives, confiscate assets, and deliver direct threats. On May 24, Liu Yanping, an official at China’s Security Ministry (the equivalent of the C.I.A.), flew to New York with three colleagues. Entering the country on a visa that allows foreign government officials to travel through America en route to another destination without conducting official business, they met Guo at his apartment and pressured him to return to China and drop his accusations. “You can’t keep doing this forever,” Liu can be heard saying on an audio recording Guo posted online in September and the Journalreviewed. “I’m worried about you, to tell you the truth.”
U.S. authorities, whom Guo had informed about the impending visit, decided to take action. F.B.I. agents reportedly confronted the Chinese officials at New York’s Pennsylvania Station and told them to leave the country, saying they were in violation of their visas and shouldn’t confer with Guo again. The Chinese officials got on a train to Washington and, two days later, returned to Guo’s apartment before catching a flight back to China. Guo said he again rejected the officials’ offer of clemency in exchange for silence and walked them out of his apartment block. In the meantime, U.S. officials were poised to arrest the group at the J.F.K. Airport; after the state department argued it could trigger a diplomatic crisis, however, they were allowed to leave.
Then in June, Trump gathered his top aides, including Vice President Mike Pence, Jared Kushner, and former chief strategist Steve Bannon, for an Oval Office meeting about Chinese foreign policy. Briefed on Beijing’s alleged efforts to steal cutting-edge research from labs and trade secrets from U.S. companies, Trump reportedly said that he knew of at least one “Chinese criminal” that America needed to deport immediately. “Where’s the letter that Steve brought?” he asked his secretary. “We need to get this criminal out of the country.” Aides apparently thought Trump was talking about a Chinese national in trouble with U.S. law enforcement agencies, but he was actually referring to a letter that Wynn, whose multi-billion-dollar gambling properties in Macau must be approved annually by Chinese authorities, had given him at a private dinner. (A spokesperson for Wynn told the Journal that its reporting was false, but did not offer any comment. The White House also declined to comment.)
Despite Wynn’s flagrant conflict of interest, Trump was reportedly considering deporting Guo until aides talked him out of it—including informing him that Guo happens to be a member of his Mar-a-Lago resort (a privilege that costs $200,000 in initiation fees plus $14,000 in annual dues). The president subsequently changed his mind, exposing a secondary set of even more problematic biases. Apparently, Trump was more than happy to allow a wealthy friend to pressure him on foreign policy—until he was made aware of an even more pressing concern, that is. In the White House, personal relationships always seem to trump politics. But business, and family, come first.
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