Chinese woman charged with illegally entering Mar-a-Lago
A woman carrying a device with computer malware is caught at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.
If you arrive at Donald Trump’s luxury Mar a Lago resort in Florida carrying two Chinese passports, four mobile phones, malware and conflicting stories, it’s a fair bet that you will raise suspicion.
Yet somehow the woman who carried all these things managed to get past the first checkpoint of the president’s gilded fortress resort last weekend.
Firstly 32-year-old Yujing Zhang told a Secret Service agent that she wanted to use the resort’s pool, according to a criminal complaint filed in Florida. The Secret Service agent tried to work out if she was a member of the exclusive resort but a manager thought she was related to another member with the same surname and waved her through.
“Zhang was asked if the true member . . . was her father, but she did not give a definitive answer,” according to the criminal complaint filed by Secret Service special agent Samuel Ivanovich.
“Zhang additionally did not give a definitive answer when asked if she was there to meet with anyone. Due to a potential language barrier issue, Mar-a-Lago believed her to be the relative of member Zhang and allowed her access onto the property.”
She then rode on a valet golf cart to the main entrance where she was approached by a receptionist. Zhang told her that she was there to attend a United Nations Chinese American Association event but the receptionist knew there was no such event on that day. When Secret Service agents came to question her further Zhang claimed she had arrived early so that she could “familiarise herself with the property and take pictures.”
She showed the agents documentation in Chinese which she claimed was her invitation to the event but they could not read it.
Agents removed the woman from the property, saying that she then became “verbally aggressive’’.
Agent Ivanovich said she claimed to have travelled from China to Florida after somebody called “Charles’’ who she met on a Chinese social media app, advised her to come to Mar a Lago to speak with a member of the President’s family “about Chinese and American foreign economic relations’’.
“During the second interview of Zhang, she claimed her Chinese friend ‘Charles’ told her to travel from Shanghai, China to Palm Beach, Florida, to attend this event and attempt to speak with a member of the President’s family about Chinese and American foreign economic relations. Agents were unable to obtain any information more specifically identifying Zhang’s purported contact, ‘Charles’,” the complaint said.
When the agents searched Ms Zhang they found four mobile phones, a laptop computer, a thumb drive containing malware and an external hard drive. She did not have bathers with her, despite her initial claim that she had come to swim in the pool.
The president was not at the resort at the time and was golfing at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.
The Secret Service says the investigation is “ongoing’’.
Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia
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