I had flagged attention to reports of this on Twitter. But I hadn’t been able to securely source. Now MoJo appears to have done so. Cindy Yang, the woman at the center of this Mar-a-Lago/massage parlor story, has served on boards of two Chinese advocacy organizations organized and substantially directed by the Chinese communist party. These are Florida branch of the Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China (CPPRC) and the Miami chapter of the American arm of the Chinese Association of Science and Technology.

It’s not surprising that a Chinese immigrant, who has extensive and on-going business ties in China, would be involved with cultural or politico-cultural organizations tied to the Chinese government. But they are also the kinds of connections that would raise counter-intelligence flags for someone literally in the business of selling access to the President of the United States.

One separate issue. A few people have referenced that I referred in an earlier post to Yang as a foreign national whereas the first Mother Jones story refers to her as a registered Republican. This point is still unclear to me. MoJo does refer to her that way. But it sources this fact back to the original story in the Miami Herald. And the Herald story does not say that. It says at one point that there’s no record of Yang voting in the last ten years. That certainly sounds like a reference to her being a potential voter and thus a citizen. But it doesn’t actually say that. If anyone sees a direct reference to Yang’s being a citizen, not sourced to the original Herald story, please let me know.

One final point. Since there’s at least some hint of foreign intelligence penetration here it might seem like people are going spy wild or seeing conspiracies everywhere. Alternatively, it might seem that Trump has been compromised in ten different directions. I don’t think either is really the case. Trump is just very, very corrupt, looking for even smallish or medium-sized grifts in almost every direction. Those are always channels foreign governments and ordinary American crooks look to operate in. All of this, to me, seems like the product of Trump’s corruption tied with an indifference to his responsibilities as President and nearly sole focus on personal enrichment.