Hours after the arrest last week of fugitive Chinese mogul Guo Wengui at his Upper East Side penthouse apartment in the tony Sherry-Netherland Hotel, a two-alarm fire broke out there. New York authorities are investigating what caused the blaze, which news reports said began while Guo was in custody and FBI agents were searching his […]
Author: Daniel Friedman
Steve Bannon Is Neck-Deep in Guo Wengui’s Allegedly Fraudulent Business Empire
In late November 2021, Steve Bannon appeared in a live broadcast on GTV, a media outlet that he’d helped his friend Guo Wengui launch a year earlier. Bannon used the appearance to celebrate HCoin, a supposed cryptocurrency that Guo was selling. The currency, Bannon said, was a “monumental” and “extraordinary” success. Bannon also hailed the Himalaya […]
MAGA Mogul Guo Wengui Charged in $1 Billion Fraud Scheme
Guo Wengui, an erratic Chinese exile who has a close relationship with Steve Bannon, was arrested Wednesday and charged with running a massive scheme to defraud an international coterie of online fans out of more than $1 billion. According to a federal indictment unsealed this morning, Guo, who also uses the names Miles Guo and […]
Trump Said He Might Have Let Russia “Take Over” Parts of Ukraine. Fox News Edited It Out.
Last week, Donald Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he could have stopped the invasion of Ukraine by allowing Russia to “take over” parts of Ukraine. “I could have negotiated. I could’ve made a deal to take over something,” Trump said in a radio interview Monday. “There are certain areas that are Russian-speaking areas, […]
Mike Pence’s Harshest Critique of January 6 Comes Too Late
Mike Pence is fighting to avoid testifying before a grand jury investigating January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. He blew off the congressional committee that looked into the matter, too. But the former vice president was willing to talk about the attack Saturday night at a white-tie dinner for politicians and journalists in Washington. “President Trump […]
Steve Bannon, an Exiled Mogul, and the Ukraine Rescue Effort That (Mostly) Wasn’t
As Yana Ibragimov and her two young children waited at the Lviv train station, it was snowing. This was March 7, 2022, early in the war in Ukraine. Russian troops were advancing. A day earlier, Russian shells had killed refugees like them in Irpin. The family, tired and scared, searched the parking lot for the […]
Hunter Biden Threatens to Sue Steve Bannon and Exiled Mogul Guo Wengui
A lawyer for Hunter Biden has threatened to sue Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese mogul closely linked to Steve Bannon, over Guo’s role in disseminating material reputedly copied from Biden’s laptop. In a letter sent Thursday, high-powered attorney Abbe Lowell demanded that Guo preserve any evidence that might be relevant to such a suit. Lowell—who Biden […]
Republicans Swing and Miss on Hunter Biden and Twitter
House Republicans spent much of their first big oversight committee hearing Wednesday attacking Twitter for denying American voters the chance to look at Hunter Biden’s penis. The lawmakers’ pro-dick-pic position was probably inadvertent. But that is where they landed. The hearing failed to produce any evidence to support the central allegation advanced by committee chair, Rep. Jim […]
Why Twitter Was Right to Suppress (Some of) the Material From Hunter’s Laptop
Shortly before Election Day in 2020, Steve Bannon was bragging about his success with the “laptop from hell.” He and his allies had been spreading damaging rumors about Hunter Biden—including outright lies—and Joe Biden’s campaign had failed to refute them. “Nobody came out and said anything you’re saying’s not true,” Bannon asserted in an October 31 meeting […]
Why Those Documents at Mike Pence’s Place Should Be Bad for Trump
Has the FBI checked Dick Cheney’s house? On Tuesday, a lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence announced that classified documents at Pence’s Indiana home had been recently found. The news offers a chance to pause for a moment and consider just how far off the rails the general discourse about former officials’ possession of […]