In Defamation Lawsuit, a Trump Donor Acknowledges Providing Chinese Execs "Access" in US

[Eugene]

Credit to Lawrence O'Donnell for the heads up

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Source: Mother Jones

POLITICS 12 HOURS AGO

In Defamation Lawsuit, a Trump Donor Acknowledges Providing Chinese Execs “Access” in US

According to her lawyer, Cindy Yang “realized the premium attached to a picture and story that her clients would cherish.”

DAVID CORN and DAN FRIEDMAN

Last week, Li “Cindy” Yang, the Florida massage parlor entrepreneur and Trump donor who has been part of the recent controversy involving Donald Trump’s private resort, Mar-a-Lago, filed a defamation lawsuit against the parent company of the Miami Herald. The suit focused on a Herald story that had placed Yang in the spotlight by reporting she had posed for a photo with Trump at his West Palm Beach golf club during a Super Bowl party in February and noting that Yang had founded the day spa where Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, had been busted for allegedly soliciting prostitution. (Yang sold that particular spa years earlier.) The suit claims the newspaper published false statements about Yang and her business that suggested illegal conduct had occurred in her spas. But the suit also contained a surprising passage that acknowledged that Yang had also run a business that provided Chinese executives “access to American business and political culture”—and this included entry to events at Mar-a-Lago.

After the Herald story appeared in March, Mother Jones reported that Yang owned a firm that had offered to sell Chinese clients access to Trump and his family via visits to Mar-a-Lago. The company, GY US Investments, noted on its website—which has since been taken down—that its business consulting services addressed clients looking to make high-level connections in the United States. On a page displaying a photo of Mar-a-Lago, the firm said its “activities for clients” included offering them “the opportunity to interact with the president, the [American] Minister of Commerce and other political figures.” The company boasted it had “arranged taking photos with the President” and suggested it can provide clients with access to a “White House and Capitol Hill Dinner.”

Weeks after that story was posted, Yang’s attorney, Evan Turk, contacted Mother Jones and threatened a lawsuit, claiming the article defamed Yang. In a letter, Turk wrote that the Mother Jones article inaccurately reported that “Cindy Yang runs an investment business that has offerred [sic] to sell Chinese clients access to Trump and his family. This is nothing but false conjecture based on her company’s website that offerred [sic] business assistance in America to potential Chinese clientele; a travel package.” (No lawsuit has yet been filed.)

Yet in the lawsuit Turk dropped on the Herald, he stated that Yang was in the access business. A paragraph citing her entrepreneurial talents explained how GY US Investments was founded and operated:

YANG came to the United States [from China] in search of a better life. She realized the American dream through her entrepreneurial acumen. She created GY US Investments which provided access to the American business and political culture through her understanding of opportunity. GY US Investments was a travel package for Chinese businessmen and philanthropists to travel to America. She realized the premium attached to a picture and story that her clients would cherish, while at the same time, supporting charitable causes. She had an opportunity to share her understanding of the Palm Beach charity scene and events publicly promoted at Mar-a-Lago (amongst others). YANG’s business model relied upon her reputation and relationships she had painstakingly established during her time spent in the Palm Beach County area.

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Read more: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/05/in-defamation-lawsuit-a-trump-donor-acknowledges-providing-chinese-execs-access-in-us/