The saga of Guo Wengui—the Chinese mogul-turned-MAGA-influencer who is on trial in Manhattan federal court—involves an international political movement with the audacious goal of overthrowing China’s government. It includes former top advisers to Donald Trump. There is talk of intelligence operations, an FBI counterintelligence probe, and allegations that Guo may actually be a Chinese double agent, which he denies. Guo has underwritten crackpot claims that Covid is a Chinese bioweapon, spread smut from Hunter Biden’s laptop, and secretly steered funds to help Trump try to steal the 2020 election.

But the criminal case against Guo is simpler. Behind the spy games and Trump ties, it’s about fraud. Guo is accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from thousands of his own political followers through simple investment scams.

The alleged victims of this scheme are Chinese-speaking emigres who were drawn to Guo beginning in 2017 due to his claim to be a leading critic of the Chinese Communist Party. These supporters joined online clubs that were part of what Guo called his “Whistleblower Movement.” In 2020, many began pouring money into “investment opportunities” he offered. Guo allegedly diverted those funds to pay for the lifestyle of a supposed billionaire, buying a mansion, a $4.4 million car, $978,000 in rugs, a yacht, and $36,000 mattresses he slept on while his fans lost their shirts.

“Miles Guo stole my money,” Jenny Li, a Nevada resident who emigrated from China about 20 years ago, testified through an interpreter Tuesday, referring to one of the various names Guo uses. “I was cheated,” she said later.

Li said she first learned of Guo after Voice of America cut off a live interview he did with that news outlet in April 2017, allegedly in response to Chinese government complaints about claims Guo made during the broadcast about CCP corruption. When Guo and former Trump aide Steve Bannon announced the launch of a nonprofit that would supposedly advance the rule of law in China—with $100 million Guo pledged to donate himself, but never did—Li contributed around $6,000, she said.

Like many Guo fans, she made a habit of watching almost all of the hours-long videos that Guo posted online most days.

In April 2020, Guo told his fans he was giving them the chance to invest in a video streaming and news company called GTV. He said the company would develop technology to evade Beijing’s censors, giving an outside perspective to millions of Chinese viewers. He also claimed that investors were guaranteed not to loss money. These, prosecutors say, were lies. But many Guo fans believed him.

Li testified that she invested more than $100,000 through various mechanisms Guo created to allow his backers to supposedly buy into GTV. She said that she raised the money by getting a second mortgage.

Most of those funds disappeared. Li eventually recovered around $18,500, via a program the SEC set up to compensate Guo’s victims. The rest was gone. “I didn’t get anything back,” Li said.

Le Zhou, a Florida realtor who first came to the United States in 1998 for college, also learned of Guo in 2017, when he began watching Guo’s YouTube videos. Zhou testified on May 28 that he backed Guo’s movement due to his own family’s suffering in China. He, too, gave first to Guo’s nonprofit, the Rule of Law Foundation.

Zhou eventually put around $120,000 of his personal funds into Guo’s investment offerings. He testified that he sold his home and tapped his wife’s life insurance to raise that money.

Zhou said he believed Guo’s supposed “personal guarantee” to GTV investors that he would repay them to cover any losses. Zhou said that he also accepted Guo’s claim that GTV investments would be used to improve GTV’s technology to help it compete with companies like YouTube, and that he bought into GTV’s supposed political purpose.

“GTV website also is for the freedom of voice for other Chinese people,” Zhou said. “I was follower myself. I [was] really a believer for this movement. I want to just be part of it and also to help grow this GTV.”

But Zhou said never received GTV stock. And when he sought to recover his funds, Guo did not step in. The SEC did, helping Zhou to recoup some of his funds. He ultimately lost $30,000, he said.

In addition, without telling GTV investors, Guo gave $100 million of the capital he raised to a hedge fund that was making what proved to be a failed bet shorting Hong Kong’s currency. Guo lost $30 million in GTV funds through the move.

Zhou said he would not have invested had he known the money would be used in a risky investment scheme rather than to grow GTV’s business.

Another alleged victim, Patrick Chin, a Texas-based engineer who grew up in Taiwan, testified last week that would not have invested about $20,000 in GTV had he known Guo’s guarantee against losses was false, or that Guo would use investor money to speculate on currency.

“I was pretty simple mind[ed] that this money will be used to build the platform, not reinvest,” Chin said.

Li, Zhou, and Chin—testifying in a courtroom packed with dozens of Guo’s remaining backers—each described a harsh reaction by Guo to followers who questioned Guo and his underlings about what happened to their money.

Zhou said he was effectively thrown out of the movement after he sought a refund on a portion of his investments. In a social media post entered into evidence, other Guo fans announced that Zhou was blacklisted for a “malicious attack” on Guo’s movement and financial ventures. At the time, Zhou had issued zero criticism of Guo, he said, apart from seeking a refund.

Li described a 2021 conference call in which Guo berated a man who asked for his GTV investment back. Guo labeled the man a CCP agent and had him booted off the call, she recalled. Li, who cried while describing this meeting, said she too, wanted to ask for her money back, but “did not dare” after seeing Guo’s reaction.

In her testimony, Li likened Guo’s movement to “a multi-level marketing scheme” run by “organized mafia.”

Chin said that his skepticism about the movement grew as he watched Guo repeatedly smear critics as Chinese agents.

“In the beginning, there were few people who left, and they were very quickly labeled as traitor or CCP spies,” Chin said. “At the time it’s very shocking, but it seems believable. But as more and more people left and more and more people were labeled as CCP, CCP spies, that became not very reasonable.”

“My feeling right now is, it’s like other cults,” Chin said. “You believe the leader and you cannot ask questions, but then some people who, quote-unquote, ‘wake up’ were able to have that effect on me.”

Guo did not use email or communicate one-on-one with his followers, despite issuing directives in videos, over WhatsApp, and in large meetings. His lawyers have used that fact to suggest that Guo’s underlings may have defrauded his followers without his involvement.

But victims who testified insisted it was Guo who conned them.

“I feel all the good intention, not [just] myself, many people were abused,” Chin said. “We tried to support a pro-democracy movement or transparency of information to Chinese people, but we were scammed.”

Federal prosecutors went to court last month with what seemed like a slam-dunk case that New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez had accepted bribes to help the governments of Egypt and Qatar while he was the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Prosecutors have the gold bars Menendez supposedly received as a corrupt payment, a cooperating witness, and text messages that, they say, showed the senator promising to take votes and other official actions in exchange for bribes.

But the prosecution is being complicated by the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause—or at least by the trial judge’s expansive reading of it. This provision aims to allow lawmakers to avoid legal liability for things they say or do in Congress. The idea is to protect elected representatives from being sued or prosecuted for performing their constitutional duties.

You might assume that this clause—while sensibly protecting lawmakers from things like libel suits or criminal charges over controversial floor speeches—would have a carveout for public corruption cases. It, in fact, does not. Read literally, it appears quite broad. “For any speech or debate in either House, [members of Congress] shall not be questioned in any other place,” it says.

The feds had argued they could sidestep this provision by avoiding evidence concerning officials acts Menendez took. Instead, they planned to focus on text messages related to his alleged promises to take corrupt actions.

But last week, after the trial was well underway, US District Judge Sidney Stein said he would bar prosecutors from introducing text messages that, they allege, showed the people who bribed Menendez discussing “getting their money’s worth” from the senator.

The government objected furiously, arguing the ruling would allow lawmakers to be all but immune from prosecution for taking bribes in exchange for legislative acts.

The clause is “not designed to make members of Congress super citizens immune from all criminal responsibility,” Assistant US Attorney Paul Monteleoni argued in court.

“It is difficult to see how any gratuity charge could ever be proven if Menendez were correct that such evidence is barred,” prosecutors argued in a motion. But Stein, a Bill Clinton appointee, rejected the government’s request that he reconsider.

Meanwhile, Menendez’s lawyers are working to use the Speech or Debate Clause knock out other evidence prosecutors hope to present. On Friday, the defense asked Stein to bar the government from citing a 2019 email from Menenedez to an alleged conspirator in which Menendez attached the text of a bill he sponsored that would likely have benefited Egypt. The defense said that while his sponsoring the measure was unmentioned in the email, the “implication” of his support meant that introducing it in court would be unconstitutional.

That motion is pending. But so far, the fallout from Menendez’s trial looks (yet again) like good news for lawmakers accused of corruption. Donald Trump, it seems, isn’t the only politician who could soon be essentially immune from prosecution.

Donald Trump has told many dumb lies. He has demanded that his subordinates tell many dumb lies. Some of Trump’s lies could cost him dearly. But his lawyers’ recent denials that Trump had sex with Stormy Daniels may turn out to be the most costly.

It’s impossible to know how Trump’s New York criminal trial over his hush money payment to Daniels would have ended if his attorneys hadn’t insisted that the affair never happened. Trump has long maintained that the porn star’s account of the alleged sexual encounter—along with former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story of an affair with Trump—were untrue. But he’d never before attempted to convince a jury.

Here is one way to think about it: The Manhattan DA’s office had to prove that Trump committed 34 felonies by falsifying business records as part of a scheme intended to violate a state election interference law. That state election law prohibits the use of “unlawful means”—that is, the violation of even more laws—to influence an election. That’s all pretty complicated.

At the outset of the trial, few people understood the case against Trump, let alone assumed he was guilty. But almost everyone, probably including the jurors, assumed he slept with Daniels and McDougal. Simple.

And yet, Trump’s lawyers, in their opening and closing statements, asked jurors to believe that Trump did not have sex with those women. It was a key part of their effort to show that prosecutors had failed to prove the complicated case.

But Trump’s lawyers didn’t have to do that. Extramarital sex isn’t a crime. They could have simply argued that regardless of the details of those relationships, or what jurors might think of the former president, hush money payments aren’t themselves illegal. They could have argued that the prosecutors had failed to make the multi-part crime they alleged clear enough to warrant a conviction.

Those are decent arguments, but Trump’s lawyers complicated it—possibly at their client’s behest—with a dubious and legally unnecessary denial.

Jurors, experts say, often decide cases based on whose story they believe. And judge Juan Merchan told Trump’s team: “Your denial puts the jury in the position of choosing who they believe.” The jurors ultimately sided with the prosecutors and with Daniels, who for years has offered a consistent and specific account of a sexual encounter with Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Nevada.

To be sure, Trump mounted that ill-advised legal defense in part because he is running for president. Denying he had extramarital sex while his wife was pregnant makes more sense as a political argument.

But his team’s insistence on disputing Daniels’ story probably hurt him outside the trial too. That’s because the denial opened the door for Daniels to testify in detail about her alleged hookup with Trump.

“The more specificity Ms. Daniels can provide about the encounter, the more the jury can weigh about whether the encounter did occur and if so, whether they choose to credit Ms. Daniels’ story,” Merchan said

Daniels was left free to share under oath her account, first reported by Mother Jones, of spanking Trump with a magazine.

Worse, Daniels suggested the encounter was not fully consensual. That testimony is a reminder that a separate jury last year found Trump liable for sexual assault against E. Jean Carroll, and the judge in that case has repeatedly said that the jury’s verdict amounted to a finding that Trump had committed “rape,” as that term is commonly understood. And it is a reminder of the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump said his celebrity allowed him to grab women “by the pussy” and get away with it.

Trump was convicted Thursday of breaking New York law as part of a scheme to cover up infidelity allegations he feared would worsen the damage from the Access Hollywood tape on the eve of the 2016 election. Now, five months before the 2024 election, these probable lies have left him facing a potential prison sentence—and have put all those damaging stories back in the news.

On Tuesday, prosecutors in the federal trial of fugitive Chinese mogul Guo Wengui introduced a video that, they said, marked the moment Guo began executing a massive fraud against backers of his anti-Communist political movement.

But the first image that appeared on courtroom screens wasn’t actually Guo. It was his better-known ally and former well-paid adviser, Steve Bannon, wearing glasses and a few black shirts. And when the video rolled, the courtroom heard Bannon announce at a November 2018 news conference that Guo had committed “to establish a $100 million fund immediately” to support democracy and the rule of law in China.

That was not true. Guo never gave a more than sliver of that to the fund, but instead used his pretend pledge to convince opponents of the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, to cough up their own money. That was the initial step in a years-long scheme to fleece his fans, according to the Justice Department. Here was a foundational lie of Guo’s alleged $1 billion fraud, and it came from Steve Bannon’s mouth.

On Thursday, prosecutors played another video of a meeting that, they alleged, led to Guo in 2020 misappropriating $100 million from investors in his video streaming company, GTV. But again, the first image jurors saw was Bannon, who brokered and attended a Dallas meeting where Guo was interviewed by Kyle Bass, who heads a hedge fund to which Guo later sent the money. Bass, who is not accused of wrongdoing, declined to comment.

Prosecutors have called Bannon a “co-conspirator” in an alleged racketeering conspiracy led by Guo, but Bannon so far hasn’t been charged in the case. His prominent role in the first week of trial, which is expected last into July, may leave jurors wondering why the former Trump strategist is not also on trial. Bannon has declined to comment on his alleged role in the Guo case.

Guo, a former Chinese real estate mogul who fled to the United States in 2015 ahead of criminal charges in Beijing, built a brand as a leading critic of the CCP. He leveraged that reputation to attract thousands of devoted fans in the Chinese diaspora, receiving substantial help from Bannon, who needed a new patron after his ouster from the White House in 2017. Bannon helped launch Guo’s nonprofits, and he advised on several for-profit ventures that prosecutors say Guo used to defraud supporters.

Bannon appears to have more pressing legal concerns. He may soon have to serve a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress. He is also set to face a trial for allegedly defrauding an unrelated MAGA-linked charity. He denies wronging in that matter.

But while the Guo case may not be a top legal threat for Bannon, it sure makes him look bad. Prosecutors argue that Guo’s anti-CCP movement was largely a con, launched to draw in suckers who bought Guo’s political claims and then fleece them via fraudulent investment offerings. Bannon helped create that supposed movement and reliably touted Guo’s often outlandish claims and dubious financial schemes. In the government’s telling, Bannon lent his celebrity to help Guo woo, and then rob, the hard-working Chinese immigrants who Bannon claims to champion.

“Without Bannon, Guo doesn’t have legitimacy, at least in the eyes of the Chinese,” Sasha Gong, a Chinese-American scholar who sat alongside Bannon on the board of one of Guo’s nonprofits before breaking with both men, said in an interview. Gong argued that pervasive corruption in China leaves many emigres believing financial success requires “some official backing.” Bannon, with his perceived ties to Trump, helped Guo create that illusion, Gong argued.

In 2020, Guo began selling shares in his GTV streaming company to his fans. He raised around $500 million from supporters, who received marketing material that said Bannon was on GTV’s board of directors. Many smaller investors never received stock or even receipts, and Guo embezzled most of the money raised, including by sending $100 million to Bass’ fund, according to the DOJ.

In 2021, Guo hawked a supposed cypto currency using what prosecutors said was a false claim that is was backed by gold, bogus boasts about blockchain technology, and a phony valuation. Bannon touted the currency as a “monumental success.”

Guo is accused of using funds he embezzled from this currency, from GTV, and from other ventures to purchase personal items like a Ferrari, a $35,000 mattress, a $65,000 television and a $26 million New Jersey mansion.

Guo has claimed an organization he and Bannon started, the New Federal State of China, will soon replace the Chinese Communist Party as the legitimate government in Beijing. In broadcasts that reached thousands of Guo followers, Bannon endorsed that notion, and he implied that a future US president could give the New Federal State, which has with no permanent staff and at the time was operating out of a Upper East Side townhouse, full diplomatic recognition.

That is wildly unlikely, but Bannon’s suggestion may have helped sell prospective Guo investors on the value of NFSC-linked offerings. Those include a pledge by Guo to provide people who invested $50,000 in one of his ventures with NFSC “passports.”

The political movement that Guo and Bannon touted took a hit Wednesday in testimony by former Guo employee Karin Maistrello, who served as the president of one of the Guo nonprofits, the Rule of Law Society, that Bannon helped launch in 2018. Maistrello said the organization’s stated goal of advancing democracy in China was phony.

The group did “nothing” to help people in China in the two years she worked there, Maistrello said. Instead it used the pretense of CCP opposition and other tricks to hit up Guo fans for money, she said. During a live-streamed 2019 fundraiser for the group, Guo underlings were ordered to temporarily move money from accounts he controlled to the Rule of Law Society so that fans watching would think “donate more,” she testified. The original funds were returned to Guo’s account after the event, Maistrello said. That was “not real money,” she said, complaining that Guo had used it to dupe donors.

These efforts occurred while Bannon was chairman of the organization’s board. But Bannon was not closely involved, Maistrello testified. He attended a few meetings, but otherwise “didn’t really do anything,” she said.

Still, Maistrello said that Bannon was paid $1 million in four installments, starting that year, by a company Guo controlled. She said it was not clear if the money was payment for his work for the nonprofit or what company the money came from. Those payments appear to be separate from $1 million that Axios previously reported Bannon received from Guo Media for consulting starting in 2018.

A Guo company has also helped to fund Bannon’s War Room broadcast, paying at least $270,000 to the show in 2021 and 2022, according to submissions by the US Trustee in a bankruptcy case filed by Guo. Guo also gave Bannon use of a private plane, a Connecticut home, and his yacht, where Bannon was living when he was arrested on unrelated fraud charges in 2020. (Trump ultimately pardoned Bannon in that case.)

In Guo’s trial, even the defense has brought up Bannon. On Wednesday, Guo attorney Sidhardha Kamaraju cited Bannon to suggest that Guo was not personally responsible for the false claim that he would give $100 million to his charity.

“That’s not Guo himself, right?” Kamaraju asked a witness, referring to the person who announced Guo’s pledge to make the donation. “That’s Steve Bannon.”

In 2017, the exiled Chinese mogul Guo Wengui began to remake himself in America as a dissident celebrity. In media appearances, tweets, and lengthy YouTube videos, Guo launched tirades against Chinese Communist Party corruption. They made him famous among extremely online Chinese emigres and won him prominence as an ally of Steve Bannon and other Trumpworld luminaries.

Guo sold a brand: A mega-rich, Brioni-clad, rule-breaking Bannon buddy leading a “whistleblower movement” with an audacious goal to “take down the CCP” and install his own supposed government-in-waiting in Beijing.

But the truth of Guo’s story is now at issue in the federal courthouse in Manhattan, where he stands trial for fraud and money laundering. In an opening statement Friday, Assistant US Attorney Micah Fergenson previewed evidence he said shows that Guo—who has also used the names Ho Wan Kwok and Miles Guo—stole more than $1 billion from his own ardent fans who invested in scam financial ventures Guo launched in 2020 and 2021.

“Miles Guo ran a simple con on a grand scale,” Fergenson said. “He lived a billionaire’s lifestyle using money he stole from people he tricked and cheated.”

Prosecutors argue Guo’s whole shtick is bogus – that he is neither a real dissident or really rich. Fergenson suggested on Friday that Guo’s movement and complaints against the CCP are, instead, a story he created to win the trust of followers before fleecing them.

And while the mogul did become wildly wealthy as a Chinese real estate developer before fleeing to the US in 2015, Fergenson said he was short on cash funds after the Chinese and Hong Kong governments seized most of his assets in 2018. That was “shortly before the scheme began,” Fergenson said. “The defendant needed money.”

Prosecutors allege Guo’s criminal conspiracy started in 2018, when he launched, with Bannon at his side, two nonprofits supposedly aimed at exposing corruption in China.

Guo’s attorney Sabrina Shroff said in her opening statement that Guo’s political movement was in earnest—the “essence of his essence of his entire being.” His financial ventures were not only real businesses but legitimate parts of a grand plan to fight the CCP, she said.

“It was not a bet,” Shroff said. “It was not a scheme. It was not a con.”

Prosecutors charge that Guo’s fraud was carried out via four interrelated investment projects. He collected hundreds of millions of dollars for a media company called GTV. When the SEC effectively blocked that “private offering,” Guo continued to collect cash by offering followers in hundreds of online fan clubs he called “farms” the chance to offer him “loans” that would result in their receiving GTV stock. Guo then formed a G|CLUBS, a supposed “concierge service” where annual fees of $10,000 to $50,000 offered members nothing but the chance to invest, again, in other Guo ventures.

Another scheme involved cryptocurrency in which Guo solicited investments with outlandish and, prosecutors say, completely false claims, among them a made up assertion that the currency was 20 percent backed by gold.

Guo said all these ventures were part of his war on the CCP and repeatedly assured investors that he would guarantee they made money. “These were lies” Fergenson said.

Guo used these funds, prosecutors said, to maintain the lifestyle of a supposed billionaire, purchasing items like a $2 million Bugatti, a $4 million Ferrari for his son, a $4 million mansion, a $35,000 mattress and a $65,000 TV.

The Chinese diaspora investors who Guo, and Bannon, claimed to champion were left high and dry, unable to recover savings they had trusted Guo with, Fergenson argued.

Shroff did not dwell on the details of Guo’s financial ventures. But she described him as a high-level “ideas man” for his businesses. She said the outfits were run largely by two underlings who were also charged in his case: William Je and Yvette Wang. That’s a hint the defense will suggest Guo was unaware of crimes by Wang, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges last month or Je, a fugitive. (Je has denied wrongdoing via a spokesperson.)

Guo “did not have criminal intent,” Shroff said.

Shroff also said that past Chinese government efforts to secure Guo’s extradition and other CCP harassment helped explain some of his conduct. She argued, for instance, that Chinese agents once wired money into a Guo’s account using names of people sanctioned by the Treasury Department, resulting in a bank freezing Guo’s account. His moving of investors’ money into various accounts he controlled thus could be an effort to avoid CCP harassment, she said.

Shroff faulted prosecutors for highlighting the gaudy details of Guo’s purchases, urging jurors not to convict Guo over “moral judgements” about conspicuous consumption.

Spending tens of thousands of dollars on a G|CLUBS membership, or $800 on anti-vaccine sweatpants sold by a fashion company Guo ran, Shroff said “is a person’s choice, a choice the Chinese government doesn’t want them to have.”

Prosecutors’ allegation that Guo stole from “the movement” he built is illogical, she said, “because he is the movement.”

Opening statements in the trial of exiled Chinese mogul Guo Wengui are expected Friday with the selection of an anonymous jury consuming the first few days of the proceeding.

US District Court Judge Analisa Torres on Thursday told potential jurors their names would be kept private “to protect all of you from any unwanted attention.” She did not mention that she decided last month to anonymize them due to Guo’s past efforts to disrupt legal proceedings by dispatching his followers to protest outside the homes of legal adversaries and members of their families.

Guo, a former real estate developer once reportedly among China’s richest people, fled to the US in 2015. From a Manhattan penthouse that he bought for more than $67 million, with a reference letter from Tony Blair, he built a sprawling group of organizations he said aimed at deposing China’s Communist Party rulers, and gained a devoted following of tens of thousands of Chinese émigrés. With Steve Bannon, he founded the “New Federal State of China” which claims to be government-in-waiting set to take over governance in Beijing.

Guo has pleaded not guilty to 12 charges, including securities fraud, wire fraud, unlawful monetary transactions and conspiracy, including conspiracy to launder money. Though it is not among the charges against him, prosecutors argued last month that Guo also has used supporters to harass and threaten critics.

His lawyers did not oppose to anonymizing the jurors. Instead, they argued that such “protective measures are justified by the actions and potential actions” of the Chinese Communist Party against their client. That’s a preview of their expected plan to argue that Guo is a legitimate dissident whose unorthodox financial maneuvers resulted from his fear of CCP harassment, not a desire to cheat investors.

Guo, who has been jailed since his March 2023 arrest due to a perceived flight risk, seems eager to avoid coming off as menacing. He appeared in court on the 26th floor a Manhattan federal courthouse this week dressed in sharply styled suits, for which his attorneys had secured a court order—presumably so their client wouldn’t have to show up in prison garb. Guo also wore glasses, and donned headphones to listen to a translation of the proceedings. He’d shaved the beard he grew during his detention, and his thinning hair was neatly cropped. He smiled and waved at the journalists in the courtroom.

Guo had previously urged his followers not to assemble outside the courthouse, according to Qidong Xia, who is known among those followers as “Long Island David,” and who prosecutors say has been running Guo’s organization while the boss is detained.

But on Monday, Xia—who, like Bannon, is among the alleged co-conspirators prosecutors named in the case but have not charged—sent a message informing supporters that Guo would actually not object to them attending the trial. Xia said he had set up a system for them to register with the New Federal State organization and attend.  

On Wednesday and Thursday, about 20 Guo supporters assembled in an overflow room to watch the proceedings. Once the trial starts, they will be permitted to enter the courtroom. That’s notable, since several key witnesses are former members of Guo’s organization who are expected to testify about how he defrauded them and others.

Outside the courthouse Wednesday, one fan deployed a large speaker to broadcast a YouTube commentator claiming Guo was being prosecuted in the US at China’s behest. Other backers, hosts of news style video broadcasts distributed via Gettr, a right-leaning social media company that prosecutors say Guo controls, did live shots. One of the hosts, who identified himself as “Nick,” declined to speak with me. “Mother Jones is controlled by the CCP,” he said.

When I disputed his assertion, Nick had a ready answer.

“You’re probably not high-up enough to know,” he explained.

Guo grew up in China, made a fortune there through allegedly corrupt real estate maneuvers, and arrived in the United States in 2015 as a billionaire. Once in America, Guo built an eclectic empire of organizations, created a public brand as a leading critic of the Chinese Communist Party, and amassed large following of fellow Chinese emigres—people whose loyalty is reflected by their self-description as “ants.” 

Guo is accused of leading a conspiracy in which he defrauded those supporters, who believed they were part of a mission to “take down the CCP,” to line his own pockets. After priming them with attacks on China’s government—along with wild conspiracy theories about covid, the 2020 election, Jews, and economic disaster—he hit them up for investments in a series of financial ventures, drawing in more than $1 billion, then allegedly hoarding most of the proceeds.

This alleged conspiracy was led by Guo, but it relied on the perception that he was both a leading opponent of the Chinese regime and a Trumpworld insider, privy to plans of the US government. Those claims were enabled particularly by Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser, who prosecutors have labeled a “co-conspirator” in Guo’s plot, though Bannon has not been charged. Other Trumpworld figures who have taken money, jobs, or titles from Guo include Rudy Giuliani, Trump adviser Jason Miller, former White House aide Peter Navarro, Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, Turning Point USA chief Charlie Kirk, and Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt. Even the fabulist former Rep. George Santos got in on the action. None of these figures have been accused of legal wrongdoing in the Guo case. 

After arriving in New York, Guo gained attention with purchases like a $67.5 million, 15-room penthouse residence on Central Park; a $30 million yacht; and a membership in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. But it was in 2017, as China began seeking Guo’s extradition to face criminal charges there, that Guo began publicly accusing some CCP figures of corruption. A few months into Guo’s campaign, waged in frequent YouTube videos and tweets, he applied for political asylum in the US. His efforts became more focus after he brought in Bannon, who Trump had just ousted from the White House, as an adviser.

By 2020, many of Guo’s followers had set up online clubs, based around the world, that worked to support him and advance his conspiratorial political claims. As Mother Jones has detailed, Guo also began using those clubs, which he called “farms,” to raise money, sending video solicitations to the groups with instructions on how to support his ventures. 

The first was a “private stock offering” for GTV, a Chinese-language streaming and news platform. Guo guaranteed backers that they would make money. He also claimed that by investing with him, China’s top foe, they would help “take down the CCP.” These lies helped Guo raise nearly $500 million from supporters, the feds alleged. Many investors never received any stock or interest of any kind, the SEC later charged. Because the offering was not legally registered with the SEC, banks froze accounts that received money from the GTV victims, prosecutors say.

Guo’s response, according to charging documents, was to continue raising money for the venture by other means. He asked his fans to cough up fees of up to $50,000 to join a membership club, called “G|CLUBS,” which marketing material described vaguely as offering “a gateway to carefully curated world-class products, services and experiences.” In reality, members received “few to no discernable membership benefits,” prosecutors said. But Guo also sent messages to supporters telling them that G|Club members could get discounted access to GTV stock. That was the real lure of “membership.”

Another investment scheme involved supposed crypto currencies. Guo in 2022 touted a product called HCoin, in part via a music video. He then claimed its value had increased 26,900 percent, for a fantastical total of $27 billion, after its release. That value, and various claims about the technology behind HCoin, was completely made up, prosecutors have said.

Prosecutors allege that Guo stole hundreds of millions of dollars his fans put up for these ventures, transferring funds into accounts he controlled and using the money to fund a lavish lifestyle for himself and family members that included a $3.5 million Ferrari, a $26 million mansion, the $30 million yacht, a $140,000 piano, and two $36,000 mattresses. 

The Justice Department has said it will argue that this massive financial fraud was made possible by Guo’s public brand as an anti-CCP crusader. That brand was boosted by Guo’s Trumpworld allies, especially Bannon. The indictment against Guo dates the start of his conspiracy to 2018. That’s when Guo, with Bannon at his side, launched two nonprofit organizations, which they claimed would expose corruption in China. Guo said he was putting $100 million of his own funds into organizations. But that was not true, He never donated more than a fraction of that. Instead he relied on donations from fans to fund the groups. He also leveraged them as part of his con, prosecutors say.

Guo “used the nonprofit organizations to amass followers who were aligned with his purported campaign against the Chinese Communist Party and who were also inclined to believe [Guo’s] statements regarding investment and moneymaking opportunities,” Guo’s indictment said. Then Guo and others hit them up with “false and materially misleading information to promote these ‘opportunities’ and to defraud [Guo’s] followers and other victims.”

Bannon sat on the board of one of those nonprofits. He was also on the board of GTV, according to information sent to Guo fans soliciting their donations. Bannon led meetings in which Guo and his advisers, including two aides who were charged along with him, plotted how to continue raising money for Guo’s ventures, despite SEC scrutiny. “All I’m trying to do is get around securities law,” Bannon said during one meeting in 2020 on G|Club, as Mother Jones reported last month.

Bannon also relentlessly hyped Guo’s investment offerings. He seconded Guo’s claims that investments in the various companies would allow Guo fans to make money and attack the CCP. In 2021 he touted HCoin, with its preposterous valuation, as a “monumental” and “extraordinary” success. 

Guo paid Bannon at least $1 million and also gave Bannon use of a private plane, a Connecticut home, and his yacht, where Bannon was living when he was arrested in 2020 on separate federal charges for allegedly defrauding donors who gave money to build a wall along the US southern border. (Trump subsequently pardoned Bannon in that case; Bannon is slated to go on trial later this year on similar charges in New York state court.)

In 2020, Bannon helped arrange for Guo to secretly funnel $100,000 to fund a legal effort to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory in Georgia, part of more than $500,000 Guo quietly spent in late 2020 to back “stop the steal” efforts. 

That same year, Bannon had joined with Guo in launching what they called the New Federal State of China. This group claims to be a quasi-sovereign organization preparing to replace the Chinese government after its inevitable fall. Under a Republican president, Bannon has claimed, the United States might recognize the group as the legitimate government of China. That fantastical claim—coming from a purported Trump confidant—suggested to Guo’s fans that their investments in companies linked to NFSC would grow. Guo even suggested that HCoin, as the currency of the New Federal State, would become China’s monetary unit.

These unlikely claims got a boost when Navarro, a former top Trump adviser involved in trade disputes with China, signed on as a supposed “international ambassador” for the group. Navarro, who is currently serving a jail sentence for contempt of Congress, has not answered questions about whether he was paid for that role.

The New Federal State has held annual galas since its founding. In 2021, Giuliani and Flynn spoke at the event, backing conspiracy theories about China’s supposed role in influencing the 2020 election. Each billed the group $50,000 for appearing. At the group’s 2023 gathering, Santos and far-right Reps. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) embraced Guo’s movement. (Gosar memorably accused China of using Tik-Tok to promote “hedonism and mindless dancing.”) The congressmen later received substantial infusions of campaign donations from Guo supporters.

Prosecutors have also said that Guo, at least until his arrest, controlled Gettr, a right-leaning social media app modeled on Twitter. Launched in 2021, Gettr, under Guo’s direct instructions, attempted to downplay his influence and instead highlighted its connections to Trump. Gettr hired Miller—the former Trump aide who has since rejoined Trump’s campaign team. A person familiar with Miller’s thinking told Mother Jones last year that Miller was assured that Guo did not run the company. Miller was paid $750,000 a year by Gettr, along with a $250,000 annual bonus, court filings indicate.

Gettr has also acknowledged paying prominent right-wing figures—including Kirk, Dinesh D’Souza, Jack Posobiec, and Andy Ngo—to use the site. 

Guo’s trial is expected to last up to two months. Though it will focus on details of Guo’s finances, his deep involvement with Trumpworld means the proceedings will likely shed new light on how powerful political figures were cashing in, even as Guo was allegedly conning his supporters out of huge sums of money.

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday revealed evidence they said shows fugitive Chinese mogul Guo Wengui—as well as an unnamed person who was living with him—had the “opportunity and motive to start” a fire that severely damaged Guo’s lavish penthouse apartment hours after his March 2023 arrest.

Prosecutors shared the incendiary new information about the mysterious blaze, which erupted in the iconic Sherry Netherland building just off Central Park, the day before jury selection is set to start in Guo’s trial for allegedly executing a massive fraud scheme.

The fire reportedly broke out hours after Guo’s arrest at 6 am on March 15, 2023, while FBI agents were still searching the penthouse, causing severe damage to the property. Guo—a patron and ally of Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon who claims to be a leading critic of the Chinese Communist Party—has a devoted following made up of Chinese emigres. His supporters have alleged that FBI agents, or possibly Chinese agents, started the blaze.

In a filing Tuesday, prosecutors argued Guo’s lawyers should be barred from bringing up such claims at trial. If they do, the feds said, prosecutors would respond with evidence suggesting Guo and “Individual-1,” who lived in the apartment with the mogul, were to blame. (Guo is married, but the court filing does not say if this person was his wife.) Prosecutors argue that if the matter is allowed to come up in court, it will lead to a “confusing and time-consuming mini-trial” to assess whether Guo “committed arson.”

This would be a “potentially inflammatory sideshow,” the feds say.

According to the government’s filing, an investigation by the New York Fire Department and ATF found the fire began “in a closet next to the den, near Individual-1’s bedroom, at the floor level, in combustible material which was stored in that closet. From there the fire extended into several rooms.” The investigation concluded that the cause of the blaze was undetermined.

But prosecutors in their filing note that after the FBI arrested Guo, Individual-1 asked “to remove a necklace from their bedroom because it had sentimental value. That bedroom was next to the origin of the fire. Hours later, a fire burned half of Guo’s apartment.”

Prosecutors also cited a series of videos and social media posts, previously reported by Mother Jones, in which Guo urged followers to launch a “Flame Movement” or “Flame Revolution.”

“When you have nothing, what can you do?” Guo asked in a December 2, 2022, video, shot on the balcony of his Sherry-Netherland residence. “The only weapon you have is fire.” Pointing at a red hat he had on, Guo then said: “Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire.” 

Though Guo appeared to urging fans to start fires to combat the Chinese Communist Party, federal prosecutors argue his repeated allusions to arson could be relevant to the blaze at his apartment.

“The defendant and Individual-1 had, at minimum, opportunity and motive to start the fire that threatened the lives of several FBI agents executing court-authorized arrest and search warrants—not to mention the numerous civilians who live and work in the Sherry Netherland and its vicinity, and the firefighters who had to risk their lives to stop the fire from spreading further,” the filing says.

The federal judge presiding in the case, Analisa Torres, has not yet ruled on the motion. An attorney representing Guo did not respond to requests for comment.

The “War Room” host can still ask the full bench of the DC Circuit to consider his appeal, or petition the Supreme Court. Those are long shots, but a DC Circuit panel said its ruling will not take effect until a week after any further appeals are resolved. That could buy Bannon some time. He also benefits from a ruling by US District Judge Carl Nichols, who, even as he handed Bannon a stiff sentence, agreed to postpone his prison term while Bannon appealed.

Former White House adviser Peter Navarro, by contrast, is serving a four-month sentence imposed in January by US District Court Judge Amit Mehta, after Mehta declined to let Navarro remain free while he appealed. 

Bannon’s continued freedom—much like the delays in Trump’s federal prosecutions caused by the Supreme Court and the rulings of an inept Trump-appointed judge in Florida—is a frustrating reminder that the justice system often functions slowly, or not at all, for rich and politically connected defendants. The Trump and Bannon prosecutions are linked, because Bannon is doubtless trying to stave off imprisonment in the hope that Trump, who pardoned him in another case in 2021, will do so again if reelected. The Washington Post reported that Bannon’s “vociferous support” for Trump’s election fraud lies helped secure the earlier pardon. 

But Bannon, like Trump, has additional legal problems, including some that no president can fix. He faces fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy charges in New York related to the same scheme—which involved raising private funds to build a wall along the US-Mexico border—for which federal prosecutors indicted him in 2020. That case is before Juan Merchan, the same judge overseeing Trump’s ongoing trial for falsifying financial records to hide his alleged payoffs to porn star Stormy Daniels. 

Bannnon is also an unindicted co-conspirator in a massive criminal fraud and racketeering case against his former partner and patron, the far-right Chinese mogul Guo Wengui. But although federal prosecutors last month said Bannon was part of Guo’s alleged fraud scheme, sources told Mother Jones that he is unlikely to be charged. (Guo, who has pleaded not guilty, is scheduled to stand trial starting on May 22.)  

Bannon has denied any wrongdoing, insisting, just like Trump, that he’s a victim of political persecution.

Yvette Wang, Guo’s former chief of staff and alleged co-conspirator in defrauding thousands of Guo supporters of more than $1 billion, pleaded not guilty after her arrest in March 2023. Like Guo, who was arrested the same day and also pleaded not guilty, Wang was denied bond as possible flight risk and has been jailed since her arrest. A brief order posted Thursday by District Court judge Annalisa Torres, however, sets a hearing Friday morning for Wang to change her plea to guilty. 

Wang’s guilty plea is likely an effort to shorten her possible prison sentence. There is no indication so far that she has reached a cooperation agreement with prosecutors. But her plea nevertheless bolsters the massive fraud and racketeering case against Guo. Another Guo associate charged in the case will not stand trial because he is fugitive, believed to be in the United Arab Emirates. 

Guo is a former Chinese real estate mogul and billionaire who fled to the US in 2015, just before Chinese authorities charged him with a series of financial crimes. In 2017, Guo began publicly issuing allegations of corruption and other malfeasance against Chinese Communist Party leaders. His anti-CCP pronouncements and Chinese efforts to silence Guo or force his extradition helped him win thousands of ardent supporters among Chinese emigres and gain attention from US China hawks.

Shortly after Bannon’s 2017 ouster from the Trump White House, he began working for Guo as an adviser and consultant, helping the mogul craft an image as a fearless CCP critic and launch a series of nonprofit and media organizations the men claimed aimed to “take down the CCP.” Wang, Guo’s top assistant since he entered the US, was closely involved in that effort. Guo’s organizations also supported Trump and regularly pushed bizarre false claims about Covid and the 2020 election. 

Prosecutors charged last year that Guo’s political posturing was a con. They allege that Guo used the organizations he launched with Bannon “to amass followers who were aligned with his purported campaign against the Chinese Communist Party and who were also inclined to believe [Guo’s] statements regarding investment and moneymaking opportunities,” so that he could defraud them. They charge that he pocketed hundreds of millions in supposed investments and used them to fund a lavish lifestyle that included a $3.5 million Ferrari, a $26 million mansion, a $30 million yacht, a $140,000 piano, and two $36,000 mattresses. 

Bannon has not been charged in the case, but in a filing last month, prosecutors labeled him a “co-conspirator” and noted that he received at least $1 million in funds they alleged Guo misappropriated from investors. That filing was part of an effort by prosecutors to ensure that evidence related to the former Trump adviser can be admitted during trial. (Out of court statements that would otherwise be barred as hearsay can be used as evidence if they come from an alleged co-conspirator.) But that designation, along with Wang’s guilty plea, will likely cause more legal worry for Bannon, who also faces a four-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress, if his appeal effort fails, and an upcoming fraud trial in New York in a separate case.