Chinese woman’s bizarre intrusion on Mar-a-Lago ends with sentence of time served
On a spring afternoon, a Chinese businesswoman wearing a gray evening gown was so determined to meet President Donald Trump that she bluffed her way into his private Palm Beach club, saying at first she wanted to go to the pool, but later insisting she was on a mission to attend a gala event at Mar-a-Lago.
Yujing Zhang was let in by the Secret Service and club security staff after they confused her last name with that of a member, but was arrested soon after her mysterious arrival on March 30.
On Monday, the 33-year-old Chinese woman appeared in a Fort Lauderdale federal courtroom, where she was sentenced to eight months behind bars — essentially time served. She had been found guilty in September of entering a restricted area and lying to federal agents about it.
In handing down the sentence, U.S. District Judge Roy Altman rejected a request by the U.S. Attorney’s Office that he sentence her to one and a half years.
At her sentencing, Zhang said federal prosecutors misrepresented why she was visiting Mar-a-Lago, claiming her only purpose was to meet the president and his family. “I already said I come to meet the president and his family and make friends,” Zhang said in halting English.
“You wanted to come to make friends with the president and his family?” Altman asked her with bewilderment.
Zhang chuckled, saying yes. But she then suggested that Trump said after she was arrested that she had received an invitation to his private club — a dubious assertion that further puzzled the judge.
Altman also asked Zhang about all of the electronic devices, from laptops to cellphones to a signal detector — used to detect hidden cameras and microphones — that were found on her or in her hotel room during her stay in Palm Beach. “Why did you have the signal detection device?” he asked.
“I’m just cautious ... because I’m a female ... for my security,” Zhang told the judge.
Her sentence, likely to be followed by Zhang’s deportation to China, writes an end to a bizarre court case in which the defendant, a woman with limited English skills and no legal training, represented herself — clumsily and ineffectively, for the most part.
She had fired the public defender’s office, though she was still receiving advice on the side at the sentencing hearing from Assistant Federal Public Defender Kristy Militello. Militello said there was “nothing nefarious” about Zhang’s visit to Mar-a-Lago — that she had a “fantastical idea” about proposing a business partnership with Trump and his family. She would never meet them during her short-lived visit.
Militello said Zhang should receive a prison sentence of time served, arguing that she was punished far more than a college student who was caught sneaking into Trump’s club and received a probationary sentence for trespassing earlier this year.
The federal sentencing guidelines for Zhang’s convictions on trespassing and lying to federal agents called for a prison term of zero to six months.
But prosecutors argued Zhang should get a longer sentence because she lied over and over again — not just to federal agents but also to a magistrate judge who detained her before trial.
“She lies to everyone she encounters,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Rolando Garcia argued. “She tries to lie her way in to say she’s going to the pool.”
Garcia suggested she was more than a bumbling tourist or fame-obsessed business person hoping to meet the president, suggesting that all of her electronic devices were suspicious.
“That suggests she isn’t some misguided tourist,” Garcia said. “She had an agenda to be on that property. “
Prosecutors argued that Zhang deserved up to one and a half years for another reason: In a similar case, Chinese exchange student Zhao Qianli, 20, was sentenced to one year in prison after he pleaded guilty in February to one count of photographing defense installations at the Naval Air Station in Key West.
Prosecutors pointed out that after her arrest in late March, Magistrate Judge William Matthewman asked Zhang about her finances during a detention hearing. At time time, Zhang said under oath that she had only about $5,000 in her Wells Fargo account. But she “neglected to tell” the judge that she wired about $40,000 into an Interactive Brokers account over the past two years, according to prosecutors Garcia and Michael Sherwin. She also “neglected to tell” the judge that she had about $8,000 in U.S. and Chinese currency in her room at the Colony Hotel in Palm Beach, where she was staying while visiting Mar-a-Lago.
When her detention hearing was over, Matthewman, the magistrate, found she was a flight risk and that she was “up to something nefarious” at Trump’s club, which has been a magnet for Chinese, Russian and other foreign business people seeking to meet with the president.
But while Altman, the trial judge, suggested that some of Zhang’s conduct was “suspicious,” he didn’t believe she deserved to be sentenced to one and a half years. “I don’t see it,” he said. “I’m not going to do that.”
In September, Zhang’s fate was sealed when a 12-member federal jury in Fort Lauderdale found her guilty of trespassing and lying to federal agents about why she was at Trump’s club, capping a strange trial where the enigmatic defendant’s true purpose in coming to the resort was never answered.
The jury reached verdicts after a two-day saga in which federal prosecutors accused Zhang of being so determined to enter the posh club to meet Trump that she lied to Secret Service agents and Mar-a-Lago staff, telling them she wanted to attend a gala event she knew had been canceled before she left China. The text messages on her iPhone 7 showed that Zhang not only had learned the Mar-a-Lago event on the evening of March 30 was off, but that she had asked the trip organizer for a refund, according to trial evidence.
Zhang, who did not put on a defense, declared her innocence during closing arguments, saying she had a contract to attend a United Nations friendship event between the United States and China at the Mar-a-Lago club.
“I do think I did nothing wrong,” said Zhang, speaking in English. “I did no lying.”
Zhang, who says she is a successful businesswoman from Shanghai, has also been under scrutiny from a federal counterintelligence investigation, although she has not been charged with spying. The secret “national security” investigation — reflected in government evidence that was filed under seal in Zhang’s trespassing case — never came up at trial. That probe, delving into possible Chinese espionage at Mar-a-Lago and elsewhere in South Florida, continues though the trespassing trial is finished.
Trial evidence showed that Zhang got past two security checkpoints before she was allowed to enter Mar-a-Lago after noon on March 30. Initially, she told Secret Service agents and club staff that she was going to the pool. Her last name — one of the most common in China — happened to match that of a member, so they let her in.
But when Zhang walked into Mar-a-Lago’s ornate lobby in a long gray evening dress while shooting video with her cellphone, a sharp-eyed receptionist thought she looked suspicious. Zhang breezed past the receptionist, Ariela Grumaz, into a lounge area.
“As soon as she entered the lobby, you could see she was fascinated by the decorations and that’s when I realized she had never been here before,” Grumaz testified.
This story was originally published November 25, 2019 at 6:04 PM.