The United States Department of Justice’s (DOJ) move to sue longtime Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn to compel him to register as a foreign agent is based on “nothing but hearsay to deliberately hype up the ‘China threat’ theory,” China’s foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said following revelations of the incident.
This is due to allegations that he allegedly lobbied members of the then-Trump administration at the behest of the Chinese government.
The department said it had advised Wynn repeatedly over the last four years to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, and is now suing because Wynn refused to do so.
Although the Justice Department has ramped up efforts to criminally prosecute people who fail to register as foreign agents, officials described this case as the first lawsuit of its kind in more than three decades.
However, the Chinese diplomat rejected the allegations in a press conference.
“China always develops relations with other countries based on principles such as mutual respect and non-interference in each other’s domestic affairs. We hope the US will discard the Cold War and zero-sum mentality and stop making an issue of China at every turn,” said Wang.
The complaint alleges that Wynn lobbied then-President Donald Trump and members of his administration for several months in 2017 to remove a Chinese national who had been charged with corruption in China from the United States and who was seeking political asylum in America. The efforts to have the man removed from the U.S. were ultimately unsuccessful.
The lawsuit says the lobbying effort was done on behalf of senior Chinese government officials, including Sun Lijun, the then-vice minister of the Ministry of Public Security who sought Wynn’s help in trying to have the Chinese national’s new visa application denied, according to the complaint.
