May 1, 2019

How We Unraveled the Mystery Around a Florida Spa Entrepreneur Who Offered Access to Trump

Follow the twists and turns of how Chinese execs found their way into Mar-a-Lago.

Cindy Yang poses with Donald Trump.Cindy Yang/Facebook

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This is the strange, swampy saga of President Donald Trump and a Florida spa entrepreneur.

Li “Cindy” Yang is the former owner of the Jupiter, Florida, massage parlor where New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft was busted in February for allegedly soliciting prostitution. (She sold this location around 2012, and Kraft has denied the allegations.) Yang landed in the news after the Miami Herald published photos of Yang posing with President Trump and other Republican notables.

But there was more to the story. In 2017, Yang and her husband had formed a business, GY US Investments LLC, that offered clients opportunities to “interact with the president…and other political figures” at Mar-a-Lago.

Here’s what we know so far about this Mar-a-Lago mystery woman:

TIMELINE

March 9: A Florida Massage Parlor Owner Has Been Selling Chinese Execs Access to Trump at Mar-a-Lago

March 10: The Massage Parlor Owner Peddling Access to Trump Has Ties to Chinese Government-Linked Groups

March 12: White House: Trump “Doesn’t Know” the Massage Parlor Owner Peddling Access to Him

March 15: Head of Asian GOP Group Says He “Wouldn’t Rule Out” Illegal Foreign Donations to Trump

March 18: Dems Ask FBI to Investigate Massage Parlor Owner Who Was Selling Access to Trump

March 21: Chinese Influence Group Shuts Down After Report on Cindy Yang’s Ties

April 2: A New Chinese Mystery at Mar-a-Lago

April 3: Senate Democrats Urge FBI to Assess Security at Mar-a-Lago

April 8: Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Scandal Just Got Bigger

April 12: Who Is the Mystery Man Tied to the Mar-a-Lago Intruder? The Puzzle Involves an Empty Lot in Colorado.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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