https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/04/20/mar-a-lago-chinese-woman-226671
By ALEX FINLEY
Politico.com
April 20, 2019
What was a Chinese woman doing at Mar-a-Lago with her pockets full of passports
and cellphones? The March 30 arrest of Chinese national Yujing Zhang at
President Donald Trump’s vacation home certainly reads like a juicy spy drama.
At the time she was arrested, after changing her story about why she was there,
she had on her, in addition to two Chinese passports and four cellphones, a
laptop and USB drive later found to contain some kind of malware. More devices
and $8,000 in cash were later found in her room at a nearby hotel.
Is Chinese intelligence attempting to infiltrate Mar-a-Lago? The answer to that
is almost certainly yes. And so is every other foreign intelligence service.
That’s just business as usual.
But is Zhang part of the Chinese effort?
U.S. law enforcement is still trying to figure that out. Earlier this month,
Zhang was charged with lying to a federal officer and entering restricted
property, but prosecutors have said more charges might follow. For now,
prosecutors are treating Zhang’s case as a national security matter, according
to the Miami Herald, adding that a team of FBI counterintelligence officers is
on the case. According to the Herald, federal investigators were already
looking into Chinese intelligence operations in South Florida before this
incident occurred. Zhang’s arrest “has sent the counterintelligence probe into
overdrive.”
As a former CIA officer, I am intrigued by Zhang’s role but wary of jumping to
conclusions about it, given the limited facts we know so far. Here are five
questions that might help us determine whether Zhang is a bumbling Chinese spy
who got caught trying to infiltrate the president’s vacation lair or if she is
simply an innocent tourist who loves her hi-tech devices.
[...]
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