Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Mar-a-Lago intruder gets 6 months for resisting arrest
A Mar-a-Lago intruder has received a 6-month jail sentence for resisting Palm Beach cops who arrested her two months ago.
Lu Jing, a 56-year-old Chinese national in South Florida on an expired passport, was sentenced Friday after a jury Wednesday found her guilty of the first-degree misdemeanor. Jing was acquitted on a trespassing charge.
Palm Beach County Judge Mark Eissey imposed the sentence, denying her lawyers’ request for a penalty limited to the time she’s served in jail since her Dec. 18 arrest.
Prosecutors requested the maximum possible punishment of a year
in jail, as a deterrent for the public to avoid similar offenses at Mar-a-Lago.
“You cannot go on the president’s property,” Assistant State Attorney Alexandra Dorman argued, citing a pattern of security breaches there. “There needs to be some deterrent message that is sent that this type of activity is not going to be tolerated.”
The judge agreed with the prosecutors to order Jing not to come within one mile of President Donald Trump’s part-time home.
“She absolutely, positively may not go near Mar-a-Lago,” Eissey said.
Jing — she also goes by Jing Lu — claimed she was a tourist who only wanted to snap photos while sightseeing at the estate.
She said she had previously visited other landmarks in the United States, from Times Square in New York City to Washington, D.C., monuments to Las Vegas.
“I’m a law-abiding citizen,” she told the judge at her sentencing hearing, speaking through a Mandarin interpreter. “I’m an ordinary Chinese woman. I never thought I would end up in jail.”
Jing said she made a mistake and asked the judge for leniency. Assistant Public Defender Schnelle Tonge added that her client has no prior criminal history and has a mother and son in China.
But during the trial, prosecutors said she was up to no good, blasting the defense argument that it was all an innocent misunderstanding.
A police officer said he spotted Jing about two hours after the Mar-a-Lago incident walking in the 200 block of Worth Avenue.
Jing clenched her hands in a fist, crossed her arms across her chest and screamed “no! no! no!” before she was handcuffed, the officer told the jury.
Jing testified that she was scared when two cops apprehended her and didn’t understand why she was being handcuffed.
“It was a normal reaction,” she said, according to her translator. “I didn’t know why they wanted to arrest me.”
On Friday, Dorman told the judge that Jing was carrying $2,400 in cash and quickly tried to delete the Mar-a-Lago photos, when the officers tried to question her.
The prosecutor said federal authorities want to know the name of the Chinese tour guide that Jing said she paid $200 to take her to Mar-a-Lago. If Jing cooperates, her time in the Palm Beach County Jail could be reduced, Dorman said.
As part of Jing’s sentence, she received credit for the 59 days she has already been in custody. The prosecutor said Jing will be deported after her sentence is over, because she is in the country illegally.