Only in Florida could a billionaire's massage parlor pit stop unmask a possible spy ring
A full-blown spy mystery with a Florida twist is playing out at the president’s winter White House in tony Palm Beach.
A Chinese national sits in federal custody, the public face of a newly revealed FBI investigation into whether one of America’s biggest global rivals is using Donald Trump’s eagerness to sell access to himself at his own private club to its advantage. Yujing Zhang, who the Secret Service says was caught slinking around Mar-a-Lago last weekend with four cell phones, waffling explanations for her presence and a thumb drive loaded with “malicious malware,” could be anything from an unwitting businesswoman to a linchpin in an international intelligence operation.
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But if you peel back the layers around Zhang’s arrest and the public’s awareness of its significance, the story begins to feel less like a John le Carré book and more like an only-in-Florida Carl Hiaasen tale. Because before there was a furor around a possible spy infiltrating Trump’s South Florida resort, there were revelations that a Chinese-American businesswoman had built a cottage industry of selling access to Trump back home in the Far East and a tabloid scandal involving a strip mall day spa in a sleepy South Florida beach town and a Super Bowl-winning NFL owner caught on hidden camera with his pants down.
“The idea that this is about a Chinese spy ring disguised as a rub-and-tug disguised as a day spa ... It’s just peak. We’ve reached peak Florida,” said Miami filmmaker Billy Corben, who’s built a cult following shooting popular documentaries about the state’s craziest stories.
It’s hard to remember now as investigators try to determine whether foreign intelligence operatives are buying their way into Trump’s inner circle with campaign donations and six-figure club membership fees, but the first thread to unravel in this yarn came in October with a tip from the Martin County Sheriff’s Office and a Google search of a massage parlor review site called Rubmaps.com.
More at https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article228849899.html
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