Two arrested for trespassing at Mar-a-Lago as bomb squad is called. ‘No risk,’ cops say.
Police and emergency rescue personnel, including a bomb squad, descended on Mar-a-Lago Tuesday after a man and a woman drove a pickup truck onto the grounds of President Donald Trump’s private club and home in Palm Beach around 12:30 p.m. and refused to leave.
The pair were arrested for trespassing after a warning and resisting without violence, according to the Palm Beach Police Department. They had been told to leave but instead insisted on “parking and remaining on Mar-a-Lago property without permission,” police spokesman Michael Ogrodnick said.
Mar-a-Lago’s security has been questioned after a string of high-profile breaches over the past year.
Ogrodnick said that a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office bomb squad unit responded to the club and cleared the truck, which was then removed. The president was not at the club, which he officially declared his residence last year.
“At no time was the community, guests at Mar-a-Lago or Mar-a-Lago staff at risk,” Ogrodnick said.
No other information about the people arrested was immediately available.
Mar-a-Lago, a private club and resort owned by Trump, is used for official government business — such as Saturday’s summit with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro — but has proven vulnerable to intruders. The president has kept the club relatively open so as not to inconvenience dues-paying members and groups that pay to host charity events. The property is also porous and lightly guarded when the president is not in town, according to a recent court case and sources interviewed by the Miami Herald.
In December, a Chinese woman in the United States on an expired visa was charged with entering the club without permission when she walked in to take pictures. Despite her intrusion, Lu Jing was acquitted of trespassing after her public defender argued the woman did not know the president’s house was private property because its entrance did not have a gate or any “no trespassing” signage. (She was, however, found guilty of resisting an officer.)
The semi-public nature of the club also led to another headline-grabbing incident.
On March 30, 2019, Yujing Zhang was arrested by the Secret Service and sentenced to eight months in prison for trespassing and lying to federal agents to get inside the club for an event. A federal judge said she was “up to something nefarious.”
Several other agencies were involved in Tuesday’s incident and referred questions to Palm Beach police.
Palm Beach Fire Rescue was summoned to the club for a “medical call” Tuesday, said Fire Chief Darrel Donatto.
The Secret Service said it was not investigating the case.
This story was originally published March 10, 2020 at 6:28 PM.
