Federal investigators are probing allegations that a South Florida massage parlor magnate funneled foreign cash into Trump’s reelection campaign, the Miami Herald reported Thursday.
On Tuesday, FBI agents reportedly interviewed and issued a subpoena to an associate of Cindy Yang, a Trump donor who allegedly peddled access to Mar-a-Lago to wealthy Chinese.
The Herald reported that federal law enforcement is asking for records related to a March 5, 2018 donation to Trump’s reelection effort and “possibly other contributions between 2014 and the present.”
The subpoena was reportedly issued to a woman named BingBing Peranio, who told the New York Times that Yang helped her fill out a donation form. The March 2018 contribution immediately preceded a $50,000 photo-op that Yang had with Trump.
The Herald reports that FBI agents in the bureau’s West Palm Beach office are reviewing whether Yang reimbursed Peranio for the contribution “or delivered ‘anything of value’ to her over that period to benefit the Trump campaign.”
Yang combined her Mar-a-Lago access-peddling business with her own attempts to gain influence within the Republican Party, snapping selfies with GOP bigwigs while bundling donations to the party.
It’s unclear how far the investigation into potential foreign campaign contributions — a federal crime — has gone.
A Cindy Yang spokeswoman told TPM that she had not yet been contacted. Cliff Li, the head of the National Committee of Asian American Republicans who worked as a mentor for Yang as she attempted to scale the ranks of the Republican Party, also told TPM that he had not been contacted.
Read the Miami Herald story here.
