[Washington Examiner] Trump donor and confidante Steve Wynn, a casino magnate, might go to trial in a lobbying case, a new filing by both parties indicates.Wynn is accused of being a lobbyist for China without registering as a foreign agent as the law requires. Wynn denies that he was a Chinese agent and thus that he was ever required to register.
Whether or not the Justice Department is right to prosecute Wynn, considering that the apparent lobbying happened back in 2017, the tale of what Wynn did and why is an intriguing lesson in how China influences U.S. policy through U.S. businessmen who seek the communist government’s favor.
Wynn operated casinos in Macau, an officially autonomous region of China and the largest gambling hub in the world. The casinos all operate at the pleasure of Macau government, which in turn rules at the pleasure of Beijing. The casinos all profit from Macau’s national monopoly on gambling, which of course is enforced by Beijing. And in 2014, Beijing began cracking down on "graft" in the casinos, sending the clear message that if the Chinese Communist Party is displeased with you, you will not run a resort or casino in Macau.
Wynn Macau is one of the region’s largest resorts and casinos. This helped make Wynn even richer, but it also made him dependent on the good graces of the CCP.
That’s why it caught the FBI’s attention in 2017 when Wynn, a large fundraiser for Donald Trump, used his access to the then president to lobby for something that had nothing to do with casinos. Wynn convinced Trump, temporarily, to send Chinese dissident Guo Wengui back to China for prosecution. Intelligence officials talked Trump out of it and soon began focusing on Wynn.
The charge is that Wynn became Beijing’s agent to keep his lucrative casinos in Macau. Wynn says he was merely passing along a diplomatic request from China.
With this episode in mind, though, we need to wonder who else is doing China’s bidding on what. We know multinational enterprises kowtow to China all the time — see Hollywood and the NBA. But how many American or European CEOs are coming back from China and pressing their home country for something that’s a Chinese government priority but has no direct bearing on the specific company?
It's a perk of leading a communist government with a robust industrial policy: Every significant businessman has to do your bidding. Who has lobbied whom against export controls, energy independence, etc.? I hope the FBI is investigating more than just Wynn on this score.
