He conned me pretty good.”Ĭinque has given conflicting accounts about the July 2018 meeting.
#Facebook con professional
“He’s a professional con man,” Cinque said. Because I got a great relation with the Secret Service and I’m not gonna bring anybody bad next to Trump.”īut Cinque now regrets ever having met Liu. “I just go in every time I want,” Cinque said in an interview with ProPublica. Cinque said that he and his guests had easy access to the president at Bedminster. It appears, in short, that Liu avoided Secret Service background screening.ĭuring both visits, Liu accompanied Cinque, with whom he had cultivated a friendship and explored business ventures. We don’t have the time to do workups on everybody in that environment.”Īs a member or a member’s guest, Liu could have entered the club without showing identification to the Secret Service and met with Trump, the official said. Those are called ‘off-the-record movements,’ and we are worried about physical safety in those situations. “Did the Secret Service know every name involved?” the Secret Service official said.
The Secret Service screened those people for weapons, but did not do background checks on them, current and former officials said. While staying at his clubs at Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster as president, Trump often left his living quarters to mingle with members and their guests in public areas. Instead, the encounters apparently occurred during periods when the president did not have official business, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Secret Service does not have a record of Liu meeting Trump on the president’s official schedule, a Secret Service official said. The Bedminster Club is a private facility, and you will have to refer to organizers when it comes to who may have been allowed access to their facilities.”
In addition to their top priority of detecting physical threats, agents check databases for people with ties to espionage or crime who could pose a risk to national security or a president’s reputation.Īsked about Liu’s encounters with the president, the Secret Service’s chief of communications, Anthony Guglielmi, said, “There were no protective or safety concerns associated with these dates. The Secret Service screens all presidential visitors on official business, subjecting foreigners to intense scrutiny. On both occasions, Liu apparently found a loophole in a phalanx of defenses designed to protect the president. Two months later, he met the president again at Bedminster. He may have made at least one illegal donation to the GOP, according to interviews.īy the summer, Liu had achieved his fervent goal of meeting Trump. He courted political figures at gatherings fueled by Taittinger champagne and Macanudo cigars, at meals in Michelin-starred restaurants and in offices in Rockefeller Center. In early 2018, he launched a high-rolling quest for influence in New York. “I’ve been doing illegal business for over 10 years,” Liu said in a conversation recorded by the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2020. How a Chinese American Gangster Transformed Money Laundering for Drug Cartels Perhaps most worrisome, the FBI was monitoring him because of suspicions that he was working with Chinese spies on a covert operation to buy access to U.S. He had ties to Chinese and Latin American organized crime. Media reports published overseas three years before the meeting had described him as the mastermind of a conspiracy that defrauded thousands of investors. Tao Liu had recently rented a luxurious apartment in Trump Tower in New York and boasted of joining the exclusive Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.īut Liu was also a fugitive from Chinese justice. In July 2018, President Donald Trump met at his New Jersey golf club with a Chinese businessman who should have never gotten anywhere near the most powerful man in the world. Read part one: " How a Chinese American Gangster Transformed Money Laundering for Drug Cartels.” This is part two of an investigation into a revolutionary money laundering system involving Chinese organized crime, Latin American drug cartels and Chinese officials, and how a major figure in the scheme managed to meet former President Donald Trump.
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