Prosecutors want answers about a shady Mar-a-Lago visitor.
Trump's greed, which has led him to throw his "Winter White House" open to anyone who will give him money, has landed him in hot water again.
Trump's Mar-a-Lago and the Trump Victory PAC just got subpoenaed by federal prosecutors in Washington D.C. for all records relating to Li "Cindy" Yang, the former massage parlor magnate who was selling access to Trump and his family, along with all the records of "several" of her associates and companies, according to the Miami Herald.
The subpoenas cover January 2017 to the present — in other words, the entirety of Trump's presidency — and will require Trump to cough up quite a bit of information.
The Mar-a-Lago subpoena demands all documents related to Yang, seven companies, one charity, and 11 people affiliated with her. Those 11 people include people who used to work at her massage parlors, her family members, and several Trump Victory donors.
The Trump Victory Fund subpoena requests campaign finance records related to Yang and some associates.
Prosecutors are building a case against Yang, who came out of nowhere and became a big GOP donor starting in 2016. She's given $16,000 directly to Trump's campaign and another $42,000 to the Trump Victory PAC.
But she's no ordinary GOP donor. She set up a firm that was ostensibly supposed to help American businesses get a foothold in the Chinese market. What the business really did, though, was connect her Chinese clients to GOP politicians — often via events at Mar-a-Lago. She even arranged for Chinese executives to attend a private Trump fundraiser, which was a bit curious. As foreign nationals, none of them are allowed to donate to Trump.
If it turns out money from those Chinese executives somehow did make their way into the coffers of the Trump Victory PAC, those payments are likely illegal.
This situation is unprecedented, but in the era of Trump, it is all too common. This is what happens when you have a president who keeps his businesses rather than divesting and who cares more about profit than nearly anything else. But this may prove to be part of his undoing.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
