The Super-Strange Saga Of Guo Wengui
A year ago this week, slimy billionaire— also rapist, money launderer and Mar-a-Lago regular— Guo Wengui, who has more than half a dozen known aliases (included Miles Kwok, Ho Wan Kwok, Brother Seven, The Principal, William Je, Kim Ming Je and Miles Guo), was arrested by the FBI in New York and charged with 12 counts including securities fraud, bank fraud, money laundering— having orchestrated a conspiracy to defraud his thousands of online followers of more than $1 billion in a crypto scam. He had already paid a half billion dollar fine to the SEC. Beloved of the MAGAdonians for pushing COVID conspiracy theories and lies about Hunter Biden, Guo became Bannon’s biggest financial backer after the Mercers saw through Bannon’s scams and kicked him to the curb. When Bannon was arrested in 2020, it was on Guo’s yacht. Guo pled not guilty to all 11 charges and is currently in jail awaiting trial, which is scheduled for April 8, 2024. His request for bail was denied, but Guo has since appealed this decision.
Yesterday, William Bredderman reported that Guo “pumped millions of ill-gotten dollars into the bank accounts of some of the most influential figures in MAGA World— including former Trump aides Steve Bannon and Jason Miller… part of a ‘fraudulent scheme’ to hide wealth from his creditors. Guo has long bankrolled Bannon and Miller’s post-White House endeavors— even as critics accuse the former construction tycoon of serving as a covert double agent for Beijing— and the feds allege he swindled more than $1 billion from China’s dissident diaspora.”
Among the trustee’s biggest targets is Gettr, the troubled Twitter alternative Guo launched with Miller in 2021, from which the overseer seeks to recoup a whopping $21 million.
“For years, the debtor has orchestrated a ‘shell game,’ employing a convoluted web of shell companies, nominally owned by family members and subordinates, but in reality, controlled by the debtor,” the legal filing reads. “The debtor, through his alter-ego shell company Hamilton Opportunity Fund SPC (‘Hamilton’) transferred funds in the amount of $21,000,000 after the [bankruptcy] petition date.”
This language recurs throughout the hundreds of filings the trustee submitted, with little additional detail, and with only the names and sums of money changing. Many of the defendants are mainstream firms such as FedEx and American Express, or obscure corporate entities lodged in the United Kingdom, the Cayman Islands, Italy, Japan, Hong Kong, and mainland China.
In all cases, however, the targeted parties allegedly received funds from Guo that truly belonged to the fallen magnate’s lenders, victims, and to the New York court that slapped him with $134 million in contempt penalties.
The materials also reveal abiding ties between Guo and key players on the American right. They show that Bannon Strategic Advisors, the ex-White House strategist’s longtime consulting concern, received $850,000 from two of Guo’s companies not long before the bankruptcy filing. A spokesperson for Bannon did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Miller, meanwhile, personally received $353,269.23 from Guo— while his former firm Jamestown Associates, which served the Trump campaign in 2016 and 2020, got $104,691.25. Fox News received $264,113.25.
Miller maintained that the money he took in was laid out in his formal compensation package as GETTR’s chief executive.
“This is ridiculous,” Miller said in a statement. “All monies earned in my role as GETTR CEO were specifically laid out in my contract and were for services performed. We will be opposing this witch-hunt.”
In text messages with the Daily Beast, the longtime Trump adviser asserted that Jamestown had created ads for Gettr that Fox aired.
“All services performed, all highly documented,” Miller wrote in explanation of the payments. “It’s quite ridiculous.”
Neither Fox nor Jamestown responded to requests for comment from the Daily Beast. Nor did Gettr itself, which Miller left last year to join the ex-president’s comeback bid.
The trustee also seeks to claw back $300,000 that a Guo-led NGO paid to Washington Times columnist Bill Gertz’s nonprofit The Gertz File Investigative Reporting Project, which pays salaries to Gertz and his wife. Gertz and Bannon helped found the NGO in question, the Rule of Law Foundation and its sister organization, the Rule of Law Society, in 2018. The Department of Justice has since identified both groups and Gettr as part of the criminal conspiracy through which Guo allegedly enriched himself at the expense of anti-Communist activists.
The revelation that Gertz had accepted a $100,000 loan from a Guo associate cost him his job at the Washington Free Beacon in 2019. Gertz did not reply to questions from the Daily Beast. Repeated emails to the Washington Times’ press account also went unanswered.
Notably absent from the list of defendants are Donald Trump Jr. and former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, whom the trustee identified as potential targets of subpoenas in a draft document filed in January.
Guo also gave large sums to Rudy Giuliani and Lin Wood and had his apartment— the 18th floor of the Sherry Netherland Hotel on 5th Avenue and 59th Street— burned down to dispose of the evidence that the Feds didn't get in the raid. No doubt a very typical Mar-a-Lago member!