US sues Steve Wynn over China ties
Casino mogul refused to register as a foreign agent for years
The Justice Department sued longtime Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn on Tuesday to compel him to register as a foreign agent because of lobbying work it says he performed at the behest of the Chinese government during the Trump administration.
The department said it had advised Wynn repeatedly over the last four years to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, and is suing now because Wynn refused to do so.
“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,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the head of the department’s National Security Division, said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the department declined to comment on why the department had pursued a lawsuit rather than criminal charges.
Wynn’s lawyers said Tuesday that 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,” said a statement from attorneys Reid Weingarten and Brian Heberlig. “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, who stepped down from his company, Wynn Resorts, in 2018 after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct, lobbied then-President Donald Trump and members of his administration for several months in 2017 to remove from the United States a Chinese national who had been charged with corruption in China and was seeking political asylum in America.
The efforts to have the man removed from the U.S. were ultimately unsuccessful.
Wynn was the original developer of the Massachusetts casino now known as Encore Boston Harbor and was forced out of the project by the misconduct scandal. The lawsuit says the lobbying effort was done on behalf of senior Chinese government officials, including Sun Lijun, the then-vice minister of the Ministry of Public Security who sought Wynn’s help in trying to get the Chinese national’s new visa application denied, according to the complaint.
The lobbying effort also included conversations over dinner with Trump and by phone, and multiple visits to the White House for apparently unscheduled meetings with the issue was discussed, according to the complaint.