Casino Mogul Steve Wynn Acted as Agent for China, US Says in Lawsuit

Wynn Resorts Chairman and CEO Steve Wynn speaks at the Global Gaming Expo 2014 at The Venetian Las Vegas in Las Vegas on Sept. 30, 2014. Ethan Miller/Getty Images

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit on May 17 seeking to compel Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn to register as an agent for the Chinese regime.

The department alleges that Wynn lobbied then-President Donald Trump and his administration in 2017 on behalf of China, and Sun Lijun, a former vice minister of China’s ministry of public security.

He engaged in the alleged influence efforts “out of a desire to protect his business interests in Macau,” where his company operated casinos, according to the department.

In the complaint, the department alleged that in 2017, Wynn conveyed to Trump and administration officials Sun’s request to remove from the country a Chinese national who sought political asylum in the United States.

The court document didn’t disclose the name of the individual, but noted that he was a businessman who left China in 2014 and was later charged with corruption by the Chinese regime. The lobby efforts “ultimately were unsuccessful,” the Justice Department (DOJ) stated in the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The unidentified Chinese national appears to match the description of Guo Wengui. Guo, a Chinese billionaire who also goes by the name Miles Kwok, fled the country for the United States in 2014; he’s an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Wall Street Journal reported in 2017, citing unnamed sources, that Wynn passed a letter from the Chinese regime to the Trump administration urging it to deport Guo.

Wynn’s lawyers didn’t respond to The Epoch Times’s request for comment by press time.

In a statement to The Associated Press, Wynn’s lawyers said they would contest the suit.

“Steve Wynn has never acted as an agent of the Chinese government and had no obligation to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act [FARA],” attorneys Reid Weingarten and Brian Heberlig said in a May 17 statement. “We respectfully disagree with the Department of Justice’s legal interpretation of FARA and look forward to proving our case in court.”

The complaint alleges that Wynn was asked to help the lobbying campaign in 2017 by Elliott Broidy, a former fundraiser for Trump who pleaded guilty in October 2020 to violating FARA. At that time, DOJ officials said Broidy illegally lobbied the Trump administration to arrange for the return of a Chinese dissident living in the United States.

According to the lawsuit, Wynn told Trump about the Chinese regime’s desire to have a Chinese individual removed from the United States and provided the individual’s passport photos to Trump’s secretary during a dinner in Washington in June 2017.

Sun was “extremely pleased and said that President Xi Jinping appreciates [Wynn’s] assistance,” Broidy was quoted in the complaint as saying in a text sent to Wynn after the dinner.

From June 2017 to July 2017, Wynn brought up the Chinese national’s case to several White House officials, according to the complaint. Other lobbying efforts include multiple visits by Wynn to the White House to have “what appeared to be unscheduled meetings” with Trump and a phone call to Trump made by Broidy and Wynn from Broidy’s yacht in Italy.

The complaint states that Wynn had several phone calls with Sun from June 2017 to August 2017, during which Wynn “mentioned his business interests in Macau.” Authorities in Macau in 2016 had restricted the number of gaming tables and machines that Wynn’s casino could operate, the department stated in the suit, citing public reporting. He was scheduled to renegotiate his licenses to operate casinos in 2019.

During these discussions, Sun said “it would be very important” to the regime if the individual’s visa wasn’t renewed while expressing his gratitude to Wynn.

Since his alleged interactions with Wynn, Sun has been stripped of his post and placed under investigation by the CCP for corruption. He was formally arrested in November 2021.

Sun was a key member of a political faction—known as the “Jiang faction” for its loyalty to former CCP leader Jiang Zemin—that opposes the leadership of Xi Jinping.

Before Sun was put under investigation in 2020, he served as director of the First Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, an agency handling political security. Sun was also a deputy director of the 610 Office, a powerful extralegal body created by Jiang to coordinate the state’s suppression of adherents of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that has been brutally persecuted by the CCP since 1999.

The DOJ said it has advised Wynn to register as an agent of China under FARA since 2018, but he has declined to do so.

FARA, enacted in 1938 to unmask Nazi propaganda in the United States, requires people to disclose to the Justice Department when they advocate, lobby, or perform public relations work in the United States on behalf of a foreign government or political entity.

The suit is “the first affirmative civil lawsuit under FARA in more than three decades,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen for the DOJ’s National Security Division said in the statement.

“Where a foreign government uses an American as its agent to influence policy decisions in the United States, FARA gives the American people a right to know,” Olsen said.

The Associated Press contributed to the report.