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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Spy vs. Spy Open Thread: Miles Kwok, Once Again

Spy vs. Spy Open Thread: Miles Kwok, Once Again

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First time I ran across Guo Wengui’s saga, I compared it to “a Trollope novel, as written by John le Carre”. The Trickster God is a lazy scripter in general, but the crossovers by every A-list GOP grifter seems particularly rich here:

… Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, who also goes by Miles Kwok, fled to the United States four years ago after learning an associate had been arrested on corruption charges. He is now one of China’s most-wanted, accused of myriad crimes by the Chinese government, including paying bribes and sexual assault. He maintains his innocence, saying the charges are politically motivated.

Guo, who made his money in real estate, has long promoted himself as a dissident being hunted by the Chinese government for his opposition to the ruling Chinese Communist Party. He is currently seeking political asylum in the United States, where he reportedly avoided deportation by the Trump administration after the president learned Guo was a member of Mar-a-Lago.

Now, filings in a civil case, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, suggest Guo may not be the dissident he claims. “Instead, Guo Wengui was, and is, a dissident-hunter, propagandist, and agent in the service of the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party,” according to federal court papers filed on Friday.

The Chinese spy allegations against Guo surfaced last week in a contract dispute — rife with international and political intrigue — between a Hong Kong-based company, Eastern Profit Corporation Limited, and an Arlington, Va., research firm, Strategic Vision US, LLC.

Guo denied the allegations through his attorney, saying the claim “utterly lacks credibility.”

“This lawsuit is about a contract between Eastern Profit and Strategic. Strategic is now abusing the litigation privilege to slander Mr. Guo,” wrote Guo’s attorney, Daniel Podhaskie, in a response to the Miami Herald. He claimed the slander was retaliation after Strategic’s counterclaim was dismissed. Podhaskie pointed to Guo’s frozen assets in China as proof that he is not working with the Communist Party…

Strategic Vision, headed by CEO French Wallop, the widow of the late Wyoming GOP Sen. Malcolm Wallop, was fired by Eastern Profit in February 2018 after the research firm provided information that was mostly publicly available on the probe’s targets, the suit says. Eastern Profit demanded the return of its $1 million deposit for the research work, accusing Strategic Vision of breaching their contract.

Strategic filed a counterclaim not only against Eastern Profit but also against Guo, alleging he is actually a Chinese government spy whose “origin story is untrue.”

In the counterclaim, Strategic Vision called Guo a “representative” of Eastern Profit, and accused the billionaire of giving the research firm a thumb drive loaded with malware. Strategic claimed Guo was seeking sensitive information on Chinese nationals who were actually assisting the U.S. government’s counterintelligence efforts.

“[The evidence] showed that Mr. Guo was detained in China on the date he claims to have arrived in the U.S. in early 2015, that he sent hundreds of millions of dollars back and forth between China and the U.S. for years after Chinese authorities supposedly starting seizing his assets, and that he’s used scores of lawsuits to engage in seemingly sham disputes against Chinese regime-connected entities while simultaneously filing very real lawsuits against legitimate Chinese dissidents to destroy their reputations and drain their finances.”…

The Chinese government has apparently gone to considerable lengths to try to bring Guo back to mainland China.

On May 24, 2017, several Chinese officials went to Guo’s home — a $67 million Manhattan penthouse — in an effort to persuade him to drop his activism and return to China, according to an audio recording of the meeting reported by the Wall Street Journal. The officials were traveling in the United States on visas that did not permit official business, prompting a behind-the-scenes skirmish between the FBI and State Department on whether to arrest them as they left the country, according to the Journal. In the end, the State Department’s fears of sparking an international incident won out, and the Chinese officials left the country without incident.

Around the same time, Republican National Committee Finance Chairman Steve Wynn, a casino magnate and longtime associate of Trump’s with business interests in Macau, a special administrative region of China, reportedly hand-delivered a letter to the president on behalf of the Chinese government. It requested that the United States deport Guo back to China. (Wynn denied the story through his lawyer, when asked for comment by the Journal.) Trump appeared ready to grant China’s request until his aides dissuaded him by telling him that Guo was a member of Mar-a-Lago, according to the Journal.

Guo is known to be one of China’s most eccentric billionaires and has spent his life mired in controversy. Guo’s official Facebook page is filled with videos of himself demonstrating his various workout routines and anti-Chinese Communist Party content — like one recent video in which he interviews former senior Trump advisor Steve Bannon on U.S.-Chinese relations over dinner.

The unlikely duo met while Bannon worked in the White House as Trump’s chief strategist, according to Bannon, who spoke at a news conference last year where he announced he was joining Guo’s effort to expose Chinese corruption around the globe…

I’m not competent to speak as to Mr. Kwok’s actual allegiances, but even the most nominal google search would indicate, in the words of the old folk proverb: Shake the hand of any of these people, count your fingers afterwards.

Reader Interactions

53Comments

  2. 2.

    JR

    Strategic Vision was the outfit that Nate Silver busted for fraudulent polling. Small world.

  3. 3.

    Mai Naem mobile

    I am so old that I remember the GOP going after the Bill Clinton campaign for connections to the Red Chinese. Its always projection with the GOP.

  7. 7.

    Gvg

    I don’t know how to tell truth from lies on that kind of story.

    Trump is such a fool though to decide anything based on membership in his club. What a doofus.

  8. 8.

    Brachiator

    Wait, so, Trump is really an agent for the Chinese government? Does he still get to be president? Has the GOP come up with their excuses yet?

  9. 9.

    Viva BrisVegas

    French Wallop.

    Sounds like an item on the menu of a Marseilles knocking shop.

    Republicans have such funny names, but at least they don’t make fun of other people’s names. /s

  12. 12.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @Brachiator:

    Wait, so, Trump is really an agent for the Chinese government?

    He is on retainer for the Chinese. For Putin he works pro bono.

  13. 13.

    Peale

    @Gvg: I think the truth is, these are all really rotten people. A lie would be that they will eventually feel any shame. Hearsay would be that they would be lousy pet owners. But where there’s fire, there’s probably fire.

  20. 20.

    Adam L Silverman

    Kwok will not be the only foreign asset, both formal and informal, who has been insinuated into Mar a Lago or the President’s other clubs. I expect that if Pompeo decides that the G7 should be held at Trump Doral, that the G7 leaders will balk because it, like the rest of the President’s properties, are all now counterintelligence nightmares.

  22. 22.

    opiejeanne

    This makes my head hurt. They really talked Trump out of deporting this mood because the guy’s a member of Mar-A-Lago? I’m not dumb enough to understand this at all.

  24. 24.

    Felanius Kootea

    Reading about Boris Johnson’s Turkish great-grandfather, Ali Kemal, and his fierce opposition to the Armenian genocide (his Turkish murderers taped an Armenian name to his body as a final “insult”). Wonder what he would make of his buffoonish descendant.

  30. 30.

    Mandalay

    @Felanius Kootea:

    Wonder what he would make of his buffoonish descendant.

    More relevant now is what President Erdogan thinks of Johnson, who won a “most offensive Erdoğan poem” competition three years ago with this fine effort:

    There was a young fellow from Ankara
    Who was a terrific wankerer.
    Till he sowed his wild oats
    With the help of a goat
    But he didn’t even stop to thankera.

    It’s even better for not scanning, and I assume Johnson did that deliberately.

  31. 31.

    kindness

    Putin is going to be pissed! Russian oligarchs had kept the Trump family financially afloat since the 90’s. Millions of dollars worth of overpriced condos. Years of work. Yet in waltzes one Chinese billionaire (who just happens to be a Chinese asset) who dumps a few $100 grand at Mar-a-Lago and China is in like Flint with Trump.

    Trump should know better than to piss off the Russian mob.

  34. 34.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I expect that if Pompeo decides that the G7 should be held at Trump Doral, that the G7 leaders will balk because it, like the rest of the President’s properties, are all now counterintelligence nightmares.

    I figured you’d noticed that story! My guess is that the only reason it hasn’t been confirmed already, is that Pompeo has been (metaphorically) beaten about the head by his peers every time he brings it up.

  35. 35.

    Mary G

    Decided not to wake up at 5:30 am to see Mueller testify. And the Rs flinging poo. I just hope the Democrats don’t spend their precious five minutes grandstanding about how horrible the president is or puffing up their latest bill.

  39. 39.

    Mary G

    SteveKing’s a racist? This guy running for Congress in Tenneessee says “hold my white hood.”

    POLK COUNTY, Tenn. (WTVC) – The billboard of a Tennessee restaurant owner running for Congress reading “Make America White Again” has drawn criticism from Polk County residents.

    Rick Tyler told WTVC he owns Whitewater Grill in Ocoee, but in the coming months will transition to campaigning to represent Tennessee’s 3rd District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

    Tyler says his “Make America White Again” sign, which plays off of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, was taken down on Tuesday evening.

    Tyler spelled out his billboard strategy on his congressional campaign website. In a page titled “The Billboard Strategy,” he explains the reasons he wanted the billboard up:

    “With its towering and massive stature, the billboard sign is difficult to ignore and its message comes across as authoritative and influential.”
    The page goes on to explicitly cite Trump as an inspiration for the sign:
    “For these reasons we are confident that a widespread and creative billboard advertising game plan could go a long way toward making the Rick Tyler For Congress candidacy both viable and a force to be reckoned with. Clearly we are in uncharted waters, in that there has never been a candidacy like this in modern political history. Of great significance, as well, is the reality of the Trump phenomenon and the manner in which he has loosened up the overall spectrum of political discourse.”

    “The Make America White Again billboard advertisement will cut to the very core and marrow of what plagues us as a nation. As Anne Coulter so effectively elucidates in her book, Adios America, the overhaul of America’s immigration law in the 1960’s has placed us on an inevitable course of demise and destruction. Yes the cunning globalist/Marxist social engineers have succeeded in destroying that great bulwark against statist tyranny the white American super majority. Without its expedited restoration little hope remains for the nation as a whole.”

    Tyler’s page says the “Make America White Again” billboard was the first one of many planned for the area in the months leading up to the November election. Other billboard ideas are posted on the site, with slogans like “Fight federal tyranny / Stop the Muslim invasion” and “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be miscegenators.” Another billboard idea depicts two hands of different races holding the other, with a circle and slash superimposed over it.

    Like Steve, he is saying the quiet parts too loud, even for Republicans. He ran in 2014 and only got 0.4% of the primary vote.

  43. 43.

    frosty

    @Steve in the ATL: Right. Last time I saw the FTFYs at Camden Yards 3/4 of the stands were FTFY fans. All I could think was that if it bad been Memorial Stadium they would be drenched in beer and fights would be happening everywhere. Don’t cheer for the other team in my stadium, asshole.

  44. 44.

    opiejeanne

    @frosty: Angels stadium used to be unbearable when either the FTFNYYs or the Bosox were in town. Drunken louts spilling beer on everyone and being damned rude to people around them, and half of these idiots had never even been to the east coast.

  47. 47.

    low-tech cyclist

    @Viva BrisVegas:

    French Wallop.

    Sounds like an item on the menu of a Marseilles knocking shop.

    Yeppers to that. Maybe a spanking administered by a domme wearing one of those ‘sexy French maid’ outfits. (Yes, I have a dirty mind.)

  48. 48.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    This is kinda off topic but since you mentioned Anthony Trollope…I remember my parents reading some if his stuff back in roughly the early 1980s (I had no use for anything that wasn’t sci-fi or fantasy back then) and howling in peals of laughter fairly regularly. If I were interested in starting to read his stuff, what book would be a good one to start with? I could always use a good laugh or two.

  50. 50.

    Chris Johnson

    @kindness: No, I think not. The things you mention are absolutely true, but you’re spinning them as if Trump was a free agent capable of making Putin mad.

    It’s not like that. Something else is up. Trump, Epstein, and all their people have been running a Russian kompromat ring for decades upon decades. If there’s a guy trying to get into the West as a big dissident, but the secret is that he’s actually a spy for China, that itself is really excellent kompromat.

    I do wonder how much of this stuff is falling apart at the same time. It’s bound to be confusing, especially if the Russian power is waning, because stories are made to be consistent, but reality is rarely consistent.

  51. 51.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @frosty: @opiejeanne: Half the fambly on Dad’s side grew up in Nort Joyzee & I do not spite them their Wankees allegiance – it’s their hometown team. Nor do I rag on the hometown fans who blow big bucks to blow into town from Beantown or the Big Apple when seats go begging at Camden Yards for their squads beating up our indigenous AAA team. (The Angeloser family should be glad MLB doesn’t do relegation…)

    It’s the fucking bandwagoners who never came within Scud range of Boston or New York (or in football season, for that matter, the Three Sewers or DullAss-FortWorthless) that piss me off. Before every home game at the Yards or M&T they oughta select one of them at random & string him up from a lamppost in the parking lot.

  52. 52.

    Tehanu

    @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
    Start with The Warden, the first of the 6 books of the Barchester saga. Here’s the thing about Trollope: for long periods in his books, nothing much happens. He’s not a melodramatist like Dickens. So, you read for a couple of hundred pages while people pay polite visits and talk about village or church gossip (or London gossip, in the Palliser books), and then you get to a joke — and you fall about for five minutes laughing; but if you didn’t read the couple of hundred slow-moving pages, not only would you not get the joke, you wouldn’t even realize it was a joke. He sneaks up on you. I would also recommend trying to find the mini-series “Barchester Chronicles” from the ’80s, starring (among others) the great Nigel Hawthorne, Alan Rickman, and Geraldine McEwen .

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