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Opinion | The Massage Parlor Owner and Mar-a-Lago
The Massage Parlor Owner and Mar-a-Lago
March 11, 2019
We're jaded, but this should be a big scandal.
President Trump at a party at Mar-a-Lago in 2017. Nicholas Kamm/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Even if you’re an avid follower of the news, it’s hard to keep track of Donald Trump’s scandals. The president’s singular governing innovation has been to engage in grift so baroque, so galactically expansive, that trying to comprehend it all at once tests the limit of the human mind. Revelations that would have been shocking in the world we all lived in a few years ago — for example, news that the president overruled his staff to insist on security clearances for his fashion designer daughter and her husband — now take up half a news cycle, at most.
Still, it’s worth trying to summon whatever is left of our pre-Trump sensibilities and pause to consider the epic sleaze of the unfolding story of Li Yang, also known as Cindy Yang.
Yang, in case you haven’t heard of her yet, is a Florida businesswoman whose family owns a chain of massage parlors that, as The Miami Herald put it, “have gained a reputation for offering sexual services.” Last month, Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots and a close friend of and donor to Trump, was charged with two counts of soliciting prostitution at a spa Yang founded, Orchids of Asia. (She reportedly sold it around 2013, but online reviews indicate it was known as a place to buy sex before that.) Kraft pleaded not guilty. The authorities have said that Orchids of Asia is part of a major sex trafficking operation.
On Friday, The Herald reported that Yang attended a Super Bowl party at Trump’s West Palm Beach country club, where the president was cheering on Kraft’s team. It turns out that Yang was something of a regular in MAGA-land, posing for selfies with Trump, his adult sons, Kellyanne Conway and others. According to The Herald, she and her relatives donated $42,000 to a pro-Trump political action committee and more than $16,000 to Trump’s campaign. Last February, she was invited to the White House for an event put on by Trump’s Asian-American and Pacific Islander Initiative, an advisory commission.
Now, there’s nothing new about donors paying for photo ops. But Yang was more than just a hanger-on. Both Mother Jones and The Herald found evidence that Yang, who emigrated from China, ran a business, GY US Investments, selling Chinese executives access to Trump, his family and Republican officials. According to Mother Jones, she claimed to have gotten her clients into the most recent New Year’s Eve party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. The Herald reported that Yang arranged for a group of Chinese businessmen to attend a Trump fund-raising event in 2017 in Manhattan at which tickets, which foreigners can’t legally pay for, started at $2,700. Her Chinese-language website, which appears to have been taken down, said she was hosting a conference at Mar-a-Lago later this month; Trump’s sister was listed as the guest speaker.
News that the owner of a chain of dubious massage parlors was brokering foreign access to the president of the United States should be a big deal. It has the potential to be a sex scandal, an intelligence scandal and a financial scandal all at once.
“There are profound national security implications to this kind of relationship,” Jeffrey Prescott, a senior director on the National Security Council under Barack Obama, told me. “It goes to the obvious opportunities that foreign governments and interests are going to see to have influence over this president because of the way that he’s arranged his business practices.”
Mother Jones has reported that Yang is an officer in local branches of two groups tied to the Chinese government: the Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China and the Chinese Association of Science and Technology. It’s hard to know what to make of these connections. Chris Lu, a former deputy secretary of labor who was a co-chairman of the White House Asian-Americans initiative during the Obama administration, cautions against casually imputing dual loyalty to Yang or anyone else.
What’s clear, however, is that Trump owns a club where all sorts of characters can purchase access to him. Lu said that when he served in the White House, his rule was that “anyone who comes in contact with the president or is in the room with the president needs to be vetted. Who the hell is vetting people that are going into Mar-a-Lago?”
As Prescott points out, when Trump met with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan at Mar-a-Lago in 2017, a club member snapped photos as the two men discussed a North Korean missile launch. “If you were interested in information about how the president is conducting the public business while at the club, there are a number of routes in,” Prescott said.
This goes beyond Mar-a-Lago. On Friday, The Guardian reported on foreign nationals using shell companies to donate to the Trump inaugural committee. Sam Patten, a lobbyist, has pleaded guilty to illegally helping a pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch buy inauguration tickets for $50,000. Under Trump, America’s leadership and its secrets are for sale. Maybe that’s why the news about Yang hasn’t been earthshaking. When it comes to Trump’s clubs, she seems like someone who would fit right in.
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Trump-Linked Massage Parlor Owner Hawked ‘Golden Visas’
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Trump-Linked Massage Parlor Owner Hawked ‘Golden Visas’
Trump-Linked Massage Parlor Owner Hawked ‘Golden Visas’
The founder of a chain of massage and spa parlors that snagged Patriots owner Robert Kraft was apparently also hawking a different line of business: investment immigration.
Li “Cindy” Yang, a 45-year old Florida woman, has found herself in the headlines this past week for hobnobbing with some of the country’s most powerful politicians (including Trump) at Mar-a-Lago, and reportedly charging top Chinese execs for access to elected officials at the Palm Beach club.
TPM found that Yang, through a Florida-based company called GY US Investments LLC, was also using proximity to Trump and his properties to peddle so-called investor visas. Under the EB-5 visa program, foreign citizens can get a conditional two-year U.S. green card in exchange for making certain investments. Mother Jones first reported the existence of GY US Investments.
Along with extensive offers of access to Trump and American politicians including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Yang’s company also claimed to provide “immigration investment projects,” according to a translation of cached versions of the company’s website. Those services included independent investments and those done via “immigration investment project centers,” according to the now shuttered website.
The EB-5 visa program allows potential immigrant investors to fund projects either via direct investment or via a registered regional center.
Yang’s company’s website listed a few examples of properties that foreigners can invest in as part of an “investment immigration project.”
The first is described as “high-end luxury real estate” and features a photo of the Palm Beach home of billionaire Jeffrey Lurie, whose Philadelphia Eagles faced off against Kraft’s New England Patriots in the Super Bowl last year.
That home is located a quarter-mile south of Mar-a-Lago — a fact that the company promotes as part of the investment, saying it’s “near Trump Manor.”
An attorney for Lurie did not reply to requests for comment.
Another photo on the website is that of a mansion that made headlines last year for its $61.5 million price tag, and is located two miles south of Mar-a-Lago.
It’s not clear whether the two mansions pictured on the website were actual projects or merely illustrations.
The so-called “golden visa” program has come under criticism in part for seemingly allowing wealthy foreigners to buy U.S. citizenship with little perceived benefit from their investments. It’s taken on a uniquely Trumpian tint since 2017 with the Kushner companies reportedly using the program to trade investment in a construction project for visas.
The demand for visas from China has led to the EB-5 waitlist for that country going up to as long as 8 years, James Aldrich, Jr., an immigration attorney at Dykema law firm told TPM.
“The thing about the EB-5s is there’s historically been a lot of scrutiny of them to prevent things like laundering drug money. And once people hear all the documentation they have to provide, the interest in them drops quite a bit,” Aldrich said. “I could see scamming investors somehow or another, but as far as pulling a fast one on the immigration service, you can’t really jump the line.”
The defunct company website identifies two other “partners” as working at the firm, Jerry Carlos and Elizabeth MacCall. Carlos is described as a Harvard Law graduate with a specialty in “investment immigration.” TPM was unable to find additional information on Carlos.
MacCall is a south Florida realtor. A picture on the Yang company website site corresponds to a photo from MacCall’s public Facebook profile taken at the Safari Night at Mar-a-Lago.
MacCall herself posted several photos from the January 2018 Safari Night Ball at Mar-a-Lago, including references to Yang herself.
Trump was originally slated to attend the gathering, but had to cancel due to a government shutdown. Instead, Trump’s sister Elizabeth Trump Grau hosted the event.
Mother Jones framed the event as an opportunity for Yang, a community outreach director for the Broward County Asian-American GOP, to charge Chinese executives for access to Trump.
“She’s really active in all the social events in the Chinese community and all the events in the Republican Party,” Xiaoqi Wang, an organizer with the Asian GOP’s Broward County chapter who knows Yang, told TPM.
Through her position as community outreach director of the Broward County branch of the Asian GOP, Yang also promoted the Safari Night Ball, which MacCall attended.
MacCall is listed in public records as a director of a company that also lists Yang’s husband as an officer and director. The company’s address on its annual report is the same as a Tokyo-branded nail saloon next door to one of the Tokyo-branded massage parlors that is reportedly part of Yang’s chain.
“I’m not a partner or anything, bye,” MacCall said, hanging up after TPM asked about her involvement in GY US Investments LLC.
Yu Ting contributed a translation to this story.
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Read this. They break it down SO smooth
MAJOR LINKS TO RUSSIANS AT MAR A LAGO AND THE MAGNITSKY ACT!!!
Wanted in Russia, he partied at Mar-a-Lago — and invested in cheap South Florida homes
(long article)
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