10/15/2019 Cerabino: It’s not the intruders at Mar-a-Lago that we need to worry about - News - The Palm Beach Post - West Palm Beach, FL
Cerabino: It’s not the intruders at Mar-a-Lago that we need to worry about By Frank Cerabino Posted Sep 12, 2019 at 4:35 PM Frank Cerabino on the conviction of the Mar-a-Lago trespasser and the visitors who are the real threats to national security
The real problem at Mar-a-Lago isn’t the people sneaking in. It’s about the people invited in.
There has been some very high-profile news about the intruders at President Donald Trump’s private Palm Beach club.
There’s Yujing Zhang, the 33-year-old Chinese woman who successfully got past the Secret Service detail to briefly get on the grounds of Mar-a-Lago during a weekend when President Trump was there.
We still don’t know whether Zhang was a government agent on a spying mission or just an enterprising young woman hoping for a photo op with the American president to boost her business prospects in Shanghai.
Zhang showed up in an evening gown one night last March masquerading as an invited guest looking to use the pool. It was the club’s receptionist, not the Secret Service, who found her acting “strange” and called for help.
A federal jury convicted her this week of lying to a federal agent to gain access to a restricted building.
And she wasn’t the only intruder to get into Mar-a-Lago despite its security.
During the last Thanksgiving Day weekend, Mark Lindblom, an 18-year-old college freshman from the University of Wisconsin, while visiting grandparents
nearby, walked into Mar-a-Lago from the beach entrance. Lindblom got past a https://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/20190912/cerabino-itrsquos-not-intruders-at-mar-a-lago-that-we-need-to-worry-about 1/3 10/15/2019 Cerabino: It’s not the intruders at Mar-a-Lago that we need to worry about - News - The Palm Beach Post - West Palm Beach, FL
metal detector manned by Secret Service agents, and into the property, where he wandered for 20 minutes before being stopped and arrested.
But it would be wrong to imagine that gate crashers like Zhang and Lindblom are the real national security risks at Mar-a-Lago.
The country is potentially far more in danger from the people on Trump’s guest list. That’s because they are as mysterious as the intruders.
The Trump administration has fought lawsuits and stonewalled public records requests aimed at revealing who the president meets with during the many trips to his Florida retreat.
In response to a lawsuit filed by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, The National Security Archive, and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, a court filing by the Secret Service’s public information officer, Special Agent Kim Campbell, disclosed two years ago that a “search and review of records confirmed that there is no system for keeping track of Presidential visitors at Mar-a-Lago, as there is at the White House Complex.”
And that hasn’t changed. The Trump administration has successfully fought efforts to comply with the Freedom of Information Act, arguing that any records of visitors at Mar-a-Lago are “presidential records” not subject to disclosure until five years after the president leaves office.
Trump won a U.S. District Court ruling last year, and while that ruling has been appealed, the people who meet with the president at Mar-a-Lago remain a secret.
And considering that Trump has failed to relinquish control of his businesses, has a history of partnering with shady foreign businessmen, and frequently mixes his personal business interests with his public duties, the people he meets at Mar-a-Lago may be far more alarming than the rare person who sneaks past the Secret Service.
Take for example, Tom Barrack, the billionaire investor and longtime friend who chaired Trump’s inauguration.
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Barrack was also Trump’s Middle East adviser during the campaign at the same time Barrack was working out a nuclear power deal with Saudi Arabia, according to documents revealed to a House oversight committee and reported by ProPublica.
Barrack was putting together U.S. investors to join with both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to buy the struggling American company, Westinghouse.
“At the same time, Barrack used his access to the White House to urge top officials to give Westinghouse permission to sell as many as 30 nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia and the UAE,” ProPublica reported.
Selling nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia is a hot-button issue with national security implications, considering that the kingdom has been angling to obtain nuclear weapons.
None of that dealing may have gone on at Mar-a-Lago, or maybe a lot of it did.
The point is we don’t know how many Saudi princes and American businessmen with stakes in the deal met with Trump at at Mar-a-Lago to push for a nuclear sale.
That’s because Mar-a-Lago is literally a black box where foreign government functionaries, businessmen and others can come and go unknown to hold private meetings with the president.
And the fact that the Trump organization has fought so hard to keep the American public from knowing who those guests are makes the arrangement all the more fishy.
So, in terms of national security, don’t worry about that 33-year-old Chinese trespasser. Worry about the Mar-a-Lago visitors who are greeted with a handshake.
@FranklyFlorida
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