That busy schedule is what Trump wanted for Mar-a-Lago, according to one former senior Trump administration official. Even after he became president, Trump did not want Mar-a-Lago to become a place where visitors became uncomfortable. So he kept it as it was—and made his aides uncomfortable instead. “The president has no idea who most of the people around him at the club are,” said another White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. “You pay and you get in.”

In the case of Zhang, who allegedly claimed she had come from Shanghai to attend a “United Nations Friendship Event” that was not actually scheduled, experts say the incident highlights just how insanely lax the security setup is at the club. Robert Anderson, a former senior F.B.I. counter-intelligence official, told the Post it was “very disturbing” for someone “with that shoddy of a story to get by two or three levels of security” at a place where the president could be in attendance. “How in the heck does that happen?” (Anderson added that while he didn’t know if Zhang’s activity was sanctioned by the Chinese government, “there’s no doubt it’s some type of potential intelligence operation.”)

In a sign of just how disturbing the breach was to the Secret Service, the agency issued a statement effectively blaming the whole thing on Mar-a-Lago. “The Secret Service does not determine who is invited or welcome at Mar-a-Lago; this is the responsibility of the host entity,” a spokesperson said late Tuesday. “The Mar-a-Lago club management determines which members and guests are granted access to the property.” (Zhang’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.)

John Cohen, a former acting under secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, told The New York Times that the president’s “predictable” travel schedule to a facility that’s open to members in exchange for a fee is “a nightmare” for the Secret Service. “If I’m an intelligence service I’m going to pay the membership fee, get someone with a clean background and have them become a member of the community,” Cohen said. “I’m going to have them bring in guests on a regular basis, and that’s going to be my strategy. I now have close proximity to the president’s staff and maybe even the president himself.” And the risks abound even without crossing paths with the president. As intelligence officials have said, according to the Post, “a foreign spy might find Mar-a-Lago a gold mine—even if the spy never laid eyes on Trump. The club is full of Trump’s friends, aides and hangers-on; it could be bugged, or its computers hacked, if someone could get in the door.”

Naturally, the president has said these fears are overblown and the arrest is much ado about nothing:

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