U.S. Department of Justice Sues Steve Wynn for Being a “Chinese agent”
A wealthy U.S. casino owner known as a friend of former President Trump was a “Chinese agent”.
On May 17, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeking to compel Steve Wynn, 80, the wealthy founder of the Las Vegas casino giant Wynn Resorts, to comply with his registration obligations under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) because he was working for the Chinese government and conducting operations against the White House at its request. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
In the U.S., under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) enacted in 1938, anyone who engages in political activities at the request of a foreign government is required to register his or her name, amount of compensation, and record of activities with the Attorney General. The intent is to make influence operations against the U.S. transparent through disclosure.
Mr. Wynn was notified by the Department of Justice’s National Security Bureau three times in May 2018, October 2021, and April 2022, but he refused to register, which led to the current lawsuit.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Wynn was asked by Sun Lijun, a senior Chinese Public Security Ministry official, to deport “a wealthy Chinese national living in the United States” back in 2017 when he was Republican Finance Committee chairman.
Sun Lijun was a man who had earned a master’s degree in public health in Australia, and who had been a stalwart in suppressing pro-democracy activities at the Ministry of Public Security, including rounding up human rights lawyers (he later lost his post in April 2020 for bribery and other offenses). The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has been working on the case against Mr. Wynn since the U.S. government announced its decision to file a lawsuit against him in December 2009.
The U.S. Department of Justice has not revealed the name of the targeted “wealthy Chinese living in the United States”. However, it is believed to be Guo Wengui, 52, a.k.a. Miles Kwok, who at the time was the focus of international attention for exposing corruption in the Chinese Communist Party.
Guo Wengui was a businessman who made a huge fortune in real estate development during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but fled to the United States in 2015 before being arrested by the Chinese government for corruption and other crimes (he was later declared internationally wanted by Interpol at the request of the Chinese government). Since then, through YouTube and other media, he has been accusing Wang Qishan, the current vice president of the Communist Party, and other senior officials of “corruption” from outside the country, and has become a “thorn in the side” of the Chinese Communist Party, which he wants him removed at any cost.
Around May 2017, Sun Lijun contacted Elliot Broidy, a prominent Republican fundraiser and businessman, and asked him to lobby the White House to oust Guo Wengui. Incidentally, it was Jho Low, a wealthy overseas Chinese millionaire, who arranged between the two parties. He is one of the central figures in the 1MDB Goldman Sachs case, the largest foreign official bribery scandal in history, which is set in Malaysia.
Upon receiving the request, Broidy immediately spoke to Mr. Wynn, who is friends with President Trump. He provided him with documents, including a passport photo of Kuo Wengui, and asked him to talk to President Trump.
Mr. Wynn later received a call from Sun Lijun himself, who promised to cooperate. In a June 27 social networking post sent by Broidy through Wynn’s wife, he wrote, “In Mar-a-Lago, President Xi Jinping
told President Trump, ‘We want Guo Wengui back. (If you do so), we will release the Americans detained in China and accept the deportation of many illegal Chinese immigrants in the United States. In addition, we will provide new support for the North Korean problem,’” it said.
Mar-a-Lago is President Trump’s vacation home, where the first U.S.-China summit meeting was held on April 6, 2017. It is rare that the raw details of the negotiations at the summit are revealed to the public, but this time the Justice Department has revealed that President Xi Jinping himself had approached President Trump about expelling Guo Wengui. In other words, the Guo Wengui issue had become a top-level diplomatic issue discussed between the leaders of the U.S. and China at the time.
After receiving this SNS on June 27, Wynn directly informed President Trump “that the Chinese government wanted Guo Wengui removed” at a dinner in Washington, D.C., and provided a passport photo of Guo Wengui to Trump’s secretary.
After the dinner, Broidy sent a message saying that “Sun Lijun was very pleased and said that President Xi Jinping appreciated Wynn’s cooperation.” To which Wynn replied, “This issue is being discussed at the highest levels of the State Department and the Pentagon.”
In reality, however, the ousting of Guo Wengui did not make immediate progress. In July and August, Wynn contacted National Security Council officials and the president’s chief of staff to inform them that the Chinese government has a great interest in having Guo Wengui extradited as soon as possible. He also made several personal visits to the White House in August to meet with President Trump.
However, the pressure did not work: on August 19, while sailing off the coast of Italy on a yacht owned by the Broidy couple, Wynn called President Trump from the ship and asked him what the current status of Guo Wengui was. President Trump only replied, “I’ll look into it.” After this, any movement related to the ousting of Guo Wengui fell silent.
In October, Mr. Wynn informed Sun Lijun that he could no longer cooperate with him and asked him not to contact him in the future. Thus, the Chinese government’s efforts to manipulate the White House through Mr. Wynn ended in failure.
According to the DOJ, it has been suggested that Mr. Wynn’s approach to President Trump at the request of the Chinese government was motivated by his desire to maintain his interests in the casinos he operates in Macau. Sun Lijun, who set up this operation against the U.S., used to be the chief of the Hong Kong Macau Taiwan Affairs Office of the Ministry of Public Security.
“If the Chinese Communist Party’s manipulations backed by casino interests had reached the heart of the White House, the shock of its revelation would be enormous,” said Professor Kitajima.
In Japan, there is no such system to register “agents of foreign governments”. Although some point out that Japan is a spy paradise, the actual state of foreign government infiltration of Nagatacho and Kasumigaseki has yet to be revealed. This lawsuit, which has revealed China’s hidden shadow power, is no stranger to Japan.
Photo： AFLO
