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| Li Yang has posted numerous photos and selfies of her with Donald Trump. |
Li “Cindy” Yang, the former owner of Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Florida, is speaking out after Democrats released a letter calling on the FBI to investigate her for selling access to prominent politicians for profit, according to news reports by ABC News and NBC News.
In their letter, dated March 15, Senate and House democrats said that the reported allegations against Yang, “if true,” raised “serious counterintelligence concerns.”
”… Although Ms. Yang’s activities may only be those of an unscrupulous actor allegedly selling access to politicians for profit, her activities also could permit adversary governments or their agents access to these same politicians to acquire potential material for blackmail or other even more nefarious purposes.”
Yang denies any wrong-doing, and says she’s being targeted because of her ethnicity and political affiliation.
“I’m Chinese. I’m Republican,” Yang said in her interview with NBC News. “That’s the reason the Democrats want to check me.”
Yang said she arrived in the U.S. in 1999 and is an American citizen, but some suspect that she could have been the target of Chinese intelligence. Frank Figliuzzi, an NBC News/MSNBC analyst and former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence said, “she enjoyed proximity to power and she even started a business offering to get you next to powerful people, politicians, even President Trump himself. In itself that would have been the target of the Chinese intelligence services, who could have fed people…into that pipeline of her business, and got them access and then taken it from there without her even knowing what they were doing.”
Yang dismissed allegations she was an unwitting agent to Chinese intelligence. She said she has never had any contact with members of the Chinese government.
“Everybody can go in when you pay the money for the charity,” Yang told ABC, speaking about the fundraisers she attended at Mar-a-Lago, the President’s Florida resort.
One of her attorneys also spoke to ABC News. He said Yang was not promoting access, but networking opportunities.
“There’s a lot of people in this country that take pictures with famous people,” Evan Turk said. “[And] you have to understand that in other countries, a picture is worth a thousand words.”
Yang said in her NBC News interview that she has struggled to sleep and eat because of the media attention. “I’m so scared,” she said.
The spotlight on Yang came after Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, was charged with soliciting a prostitute at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa. Kraft denies the charges.
Yang distanced herself from the spa, now under investigation for human trafficking. “I sold to her in 2012 or 2013,” Yang said in her NBC News interview. “How they do their business has nothing to do with me.”
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