The Massage Parlor Owner and Mar-a-Lago - The New York Times

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The Massage Parlor Owner and Mar-a-Lago

We're jaded, but this should be a big scandal.



By Michelle Goldberg


Opinion Columnist

• March 11, 2019
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President Trump at a party at Mar-a-Lago in 2017. CreditCreditNicholas 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.

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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?”

More from Opinion on the Trump administration’s corruption:
Opinion | Alex Kingsbury: Go Back to Normal After Trump? No Thanks
March 1, 2019
Opinion | Gail Collins: Meet Trump’s Worst!
Feb. 6, 2019
Opinion | Ross Douthat: Under Trump, the Swamp Is Draining
Dec. 1, 2018
Opinion | David Leonhardt And Ian Prasad Philbrick: Trump’s Corruption: The Definitive List
Oct. 28, 2018

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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Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights, and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. @michelleinbklyn

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: The Massage Parlor Owner and Mar-a-Lago. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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