The story was produced in partnership with Important Context.

Last summer, Ava Chen appeared on the right-wing news outlet Real America’s Voice to rail against the RICO charges that had just been filed against Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants in Georgia. The indictment “reminds me a lot of China and the CCP,” Chen told host John Fredericks, a former Trump campaign aide who now anchors one of the fledgling TV network’s marquee shows.

Chen was identified during the August 2023 segment as a spokesperson for the New Federal State of China, a MAGA-aligned group founded by Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui—a dissident Chinese émigré who last month was convicted on RICO and fraud charges for stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from his own followers. Prosecutors named the NFSC as part of Guo’s fraud scheme, arguing that the group’s ostensible opposition to the Chinese Communist Party was part of Guo’s scam.

In recent years, members of the NFSC have made frequent appearances across Real America’s Voice, as well as on Fredericks’ radio show. But what viewers didn’t know was that at the time of these interviews, a firm tied to the NFSC was paying tens of thousands of dollars to have Guo’s representatives appear on Fredericks’ radio and TV shows, as well as on another show that aired on RAV. The firm was also attempting to purchase airtime for the NFSC elsewhere on the network.

These payments for appearances on Fredericks’ shows are detailed in a draft contract, court records, and bank statements reviewed by Mother Jones and Important Context. They were also described by three sources. Bank records show the payments went to Common Sense Media, a company tied to Fredericks’ radio show, which is independently produced and selects its own guests. Records we reviewed and the same sources indicated that Guo’s supporters also discussed a contract that would have allowed his followers to secure airtime elsewhere on RAV, but those talks fell through. 

The transactions involving the Fredericks broadcasts were one piece of a well-financed effort by Guo backers to push messaging supporting Guo. As part of their broader outreach campaign, Guo followers also arranged extravagantly pro-Guo op-eds written under the bylines of prominent far-right figures, including New York Young Republican Club chief Gavin Wax and Karoline Leavitt, who has since become a spokesperson for the Trump campaign. Guo supporters reportedly paid $75,000 for two booths at the influential Conservative Political Action Conference, and they showered campaign contributions on members of Congress who expressed sympathy for Guo’s cause. In their outreach to the MAGA world, Guo followers argued that, just like Trump, Guo was the victim of a politicized prosecution.

“This is the fourth indictment [against Trump] in the short span of four and a half months,” Chen said during her August 21, 2023, interview on the Fredericks show on RAV. “And this speaks a lot to the rule of law and to the weaponization of the entire justice system, as we have observed in…Guo’s case.”

Such arguments have received support from Bannon on his War Room broadcast, which is among the most popular shows aired by RAV. A company that federal prosecutors have said Guo controlled made large monthly payments to the Bannon-controlled company that produces War Room. These payments totaled at least $270,000, according to a filing in federal bankruptcy proceedings initiated by Guo. Guo has also paid Bannon millions of dollars since 2017, court documents show. And Bannon has enthusiastically repeated claims made by Guo about Guo’s business ventures and political movement. 

But in arranging to appear on RAV shows, the Guo backers appear to have tapped more deeply than was previously known into the growing and unruly ecosystem of far-right broadcasts. RAV is owned by Colorado media mogul Robert Sigg, whose previous success came through WeatherNation, an alternative to the Weather Channel that reportedly made a point of not mentioning climate change. RAV, which began broadcasting in 2018 as America’s Voice News, started distributing War Room shortly after the show’s 2019 launch. Bannon has credited Sigg with helping the show after Bannon was kicked off YouTube in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection. 

With War Room as its anchor, RAV also broadcasts shows hosted by other MAGA celebrities, including Charlie Kirk, Eric Greitens, and John Solomon—a lineup that has allowed the upstart outlet to position itself as a competitor to Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN. Fredericks, a conservative radio veteran, hosts Outside the Beltway on RAV. Grant Stinchfield, whose show regularly features Guo backers, also broadcasts on the network. RAV has said it reaches viewers through “DISH, Pluto TV, Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV, Google Play,” and social media. Some of the shows RAV distributes, including Fredericks’ and Bannon’s broadcasts, are produced independently. Other RAV shows are produced in-house.

In interviews, four people familiar with booking practices for shows that have run on RAV said that they considered it unexceptional for guests to pay to appear on broadcasts, without any disclosure on the air that they have paid to appear. Usually these guests pay a booker or PR firm, which makes payments to the shows, the sources we spoke to said. The sources said they believed these types of arrangements are not limited to right-leaning media, though these people had limited experience with mainstream and left-leaning media.

“All channels do this,” said one person familiar with NFSC arrangements. “This happens all day long. You can call it ‘pay to play’ but this is not unusual.”

However common such arrangements may be, they are not transparent to RAV’s viewers. Neither Fredericks nor his NFSC guests made any reference in the segments we reviewed to the group paying to appear on this show.

The payments made by the New Federal State of China followers became public in part because of a bitter legal and public relations fight among former colleagues at a Georgia-based firm called L-Strategies. The firm acted as an intermediary, accepting payments from a Guo-linked company and, in turn, making payments for Guo followers to appear on Fredericks’ shows. A federal lawsuit filed by executives at L-Strategies against Angie Wong, a former partner there, alleges that Wong’s actions caused them “a loss of potential income [of] $120,000 per year” that they had hoped to earn brokering airtime for NFSC content on RAV. 

Jared Craig, a partner at L-Strategies who filed the complaint, said in an interview last year that he did not believe that paying broadcasters to interview clients as guests was unusual. Craig declined to detail the specifics of the payments, which he said were arranged by Wong, and he did not respond to more recent inquiries. Wong declined to comment.

According to that lawsuit, a Canada-based company called NewNoah signed a deal with L-Strategies in April 2023. NewNoah, which was acting on behalf of the New Federal State of China, was incorporated in November 2022 in Ontario at an address also used to register the NFSC’s website.

Under a draft media-buy agreement between NewNoah and L-Strategies that we obtained, L-Strategies agreed to pay $12,500-a-month “for media appearances to be sponsored by the John Fredericks Media Network.” The draft contract stated that the media package would include “at least one (1) television media hit and at least one (1) radio hit per week” to promote its client, Guo’s New Federal State of China. The draft contract also noted that “said media services shall be sponsored by the John Frederick’s Media Network” and that “host shall not mention Miles Guo at any time and for any purpose during media hits.” (Miles Guo is one of several names Guo uses.)

The draft contract, which was unsigned and undated, contains some confusing and seemingly inaccurate language. But bank statements posted online as part of L-Strategies’ dispute with Wong reveal that NewNoah began making monthly payments of $13,400 to L-Strategies in April 2023. L-Strategies in turn began making $12,500 monthly payments to Common Sense Media, a Virginia-based LLC tied to Fredericks’ show. Fredericks’ wife, Anita Fredericks, is the registered agent for Common Sense Media. The monthly bank statements, which run through May 2024, show regular $12,500 payments from L-Strategies to Common Sense Media up to that time. The bank statements indicate Common Sense Media had received at least $175,000 as of May as part of the arrangement. (In an interview, Stan Fitzgerald, an L-Strategies founding partner, confirmed that the bank statements were accurate but said he had not personally posted them.) 

On July 10, 2023, Fredericks’ radio show was guest-hosted by Nicole Tsai, a Guo supporter who had appeared on the program at least once a week up to that month as a representative of the NFSC. She appeared on his Real America’s Voice show nearly as frequently. When the New Federal State of China held a gala event last June celebrating the third anniversary of its founding, Fredericks was on hand hosting a panel. As of July 1, 2024, Fredericks had hosted a member of the NFSC on either his television or radio show nearly every week since April 3, 2023. 

The NFSC guests used these appearances to attribute all manner of US problems to CCP machinations.

In an August 2023 segment on Fredericks’ Outside the Beltway RAV show, discussing Donald Trump’s arraignment in Georgia, a Guo follower named Roy Guo (no apparent relation) suggested the charges against the former president were the result of infiltration by the Chinese Communist Party. In an appearance the following month on the same program, he claimed Chinese President Xi Jingping was facing stiff political pressure at home because he had “released the CCP virus at the end of 2019,” triggering the Covid pandemic. A month later, following the deadly October 7 terror attack by Hamas on Israel, Roy Guo asserted that the CCP was secretly aiding Hamas behind the scenes in order to bring other nations into the conflict in Gaza.

“CCP wants to get as many countries as possible involved in this, and also eventually they want to get [the] UK and US involved in this conflict so that they can divert the attention to, like, focus on the Middle East and deplete US resources and also to alleviate pressure for Russia in Ukraine,” he said. “And then, they will ultimately make [an] opportunity for themselves to attack Taiwan.”

Mark Serrano, a spokesperson for RAV, disputed the import of the deal between NewNoah and L-Strategies related to payments to Common Sense Media for appearances on Fredericks’ show. “Real America’s Voice is not a party to the contractual agreement you mention,” he wrote. “Any ancillary reference in the agreement to us is not our concern.”

Fredericks has previously faced scrutiny for selling access to his radio show. In 2020, the Justice Department forced a US institute funded by the Qatari government to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, resulting in the organization revealing it had paid Fredericks’ show $180,000 in 2018 for “access to key guests”; “regular show appearances by highly ranking Qatar officials”; broadcasts of “live shows every other month” and “regular discussions with US based and overseas Qatar officials for background and education.” Fredericks also broadcast live from Doha, Qatar’s capital, in March 2018.

Fredericks at the time claimed the payments were standard advertising. He told the Daily Beast: “They were paying me to promote their various events, which I did in my libraries when I was on the show.”

John and Anita Fredericks and the John Fredericks Show did not respond to requests for comment or to lists of specific questions. Ava Chen and Roy Guo declined to comment.

According to the L-Strategies’ lawsuit, NewNoah also paid for Guo fans to appear on another independently produced show that briefly aired on RAV, the David Brody Show. And the L-Strategies bank statements posted online show a payment of about $8,000 to the Brody show in April 2023. Brody declined to comment.

NewNoah and L-Strategies also attempted to negotiate a separate, $40,000-per-month contract under which L-Strategies would purchase airtime on RAV for a weekly one-hour “show” hosted by the NFSC, according to the complaint L-Strategies filed.

“Real America’s Voice package includes a one-hour program (approximately 48 minutes run time) on the Real America’s Voice network once per week, time to be determined,” the contract, attached to the complaint, reads. “The show will be self-produced by NewNoah, with final edit approvals by Real America’s Voice prior to airing.”  

According to the L-Strategies complaint and a source involved in the negotiations for the hour-long show, talks over that deal eventually broke down.

The L-Strategies complaint states that NewNoah did pay $40,000 to L-Strategies on April 28, 2023, and the bank statements posted online show L-Strategies received a $39,977.50 wire transfer, from an unidentified sender, on that date. In the “description” field, the statement says, “RAV 1 hour.” But the bank statements do not show any corresponding payment from L-Strategies to RAV. And Serrano, the RAV spokesperson, said that money was never paid to Real America’s Voice. Serrano did not respond to other questions about this proposed arrangement.

According to the RAV website, the outlet “demands the highest ethical standards from management and staff, and the company maintains a strict ethics policy.” The site notes that “staff members are prohibited from engaging in any conflicts of interest, including reporting on any enterprise in which the staff member has a financial stake.”

In early February 2017, just as Donald Trump was settling into the White House, the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics snagged a special guest for an event: JD Vance. His bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy had been published the previous summer, and in the aftermath of Trump’s victory, Vance was widely seen in political and media circles as someone who could explain Trump’s surprising win and the Americans who had supported the former reality TV star. As part of IOP’s series called “America in the Trump Era,” journalist Alex Kotlowitz posed questions to Vance, who at that point was positioning himself as a center-right public intellectual who, as an Appalachian native, had emerged from Trump land and could be a guide for those mystified by Trump’s success.

In a newly uncovered video from 2017, JD Vance says, "Some people who voted for Trump were racists, and they voted for him for racist reasons." He goes on to say that the alt-right and Steve Bannon—but not Trump—helped make the 2016 election "hyper-racialized." pic.twitter.com/pPlJ7uNW5h

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) July 29, 2024

Kotlowitz began with queries focused on the book. Then he shifted to the 2016 election and asked Vance, “Where do you think race played into all this? Because I think the sort of myth is that all these Trump supporters are vehement racists and anti-immigrant. And so where do you think it played?”

Vance replied:

Race definitely played a role in the 2016 election. I think race will always play a role in our country, It’s just sort of a constant fact of American life. And definitely some people who voted for Trump were racists, and they voted for him for racist reasons.

Vance was unequivocal on this point: an undetermined amount of Trump voters were racists.

But he added that he did not believe that racial animus motivated all of Trump’s voters and that he thought the country had become less racist:

I always resist the idea that the real thing driving most Trump voters was racial anxiety or racial animus, partially because I didn’t see it. I mean, the thing that really motivated people to vote for Trump, first in the primary and then in the general election, was three words: jobs, jobs, jobs. Right?… And so it strikes me as a little bizarre to chalk it up to sort of racial animus because, one, the country is less racist now than it was 15 years ago, and we weren’t electing Donald Trump 15 years ago. And, two, that wasn’t the core part of his message and that wasn’t what a lot of his voters were really connecting with.

Still, Vance conceded that the 2016 election had been “hyper-racialized.” Yet he didn’t blame Trump or his electorate for that. Instead, he pointed a finger at extremists within the conservative movement.

There were all these alt-right people, and I’m in an interracial marriage, and I got a lot of stuff directed at me and my wife on online message boards and Twitter and so forth. So I definitely buy this was a racialized discourse unlike any that we’ve had in a really long time. But I don’t blame Trump’s voters for that. The people that I blame for that are actually typically well-educated coastal elitists, people like [avowed white nationalist] Richard Spencer and the alt-right. It’s telling that the alt-right is driven by primarily very well-educated, relatively smart, relatively stable people. It’s not driven by people in the Rust Belt who go on 4chan and talk about Michelle Obama in these really nasty ways. It’s 2,500, I mean whatever the number of people is, I’ve heard estimates up to like 100,000. But these are people who are really well educated and are cognitive elites in their own weird way.

“Like Steve Bannon?” Kotlowitz asked. Vance replied, “Right.”

Vance did not spell out how Bannon and this small band of conservatives had injected racism into the 2016 campaign. (In 2016, before Bannon joined Trump’s campaign as a strategist, he was running Breitbart News and referred to it as the “platform for the alt-right.”) But it was odd that Vance held only the alt-right responsible, rather than Trump, whose rhetoric had appealed to racists and other extremists.

Vance also noted that he was no fan of the “Muslim ban” that Trump proposed during the 2016 campaign: “As soon as he talked about a Muslim ban, all of a sudden a lot of voters actually supported the idea of a Muslim ban. I just don’t think that’s surprising because, again, people follow the rhetoric of their politicians. And so I did worry about that. I continue to worry about that.”

Vance’s remarks at the IOP event were in keeping with his general stance at that time. He was a moderate Never Trumper who had told NPR in 2016 that Trump was “leading the white working class to a very dark place.” He had written that Trump was “cultural heroin.” Privately, he had compared Trump to Hitler.

Vance was walking a fine line those days. He was a Trump critic but wouldn’t go too far in blasting Trump in public. His value was his ability to interpret Trump and his voters for those puzzled by Trump’s win. And he often talked about the need to respect Trump voters.

But on this occasion, Vance acknowledged that a portion of Trump’s base was comprised of racists. And he slammed the alt-right, a slice of the conservative movement long accused of racism that had enthusiastically embraced Trump.

These days, Vance, now a Republican senator from Ohio and Trump’s running mate, is fully aligned with the extreme far right (including whatever remains of the alt-right) and Bannon, the imprisoned former Trump aide who serves as an informal strategist and cheerleader for the Trump movement. It’s inconceivable that Vance would now characterize a chunk of Trump’s voters as racists or badmouth Bannon and his followers. That’s not because the dynamics of Trump’s electorate have changed. It’s because Vance has.

In early February 2017, just as Donald Trump was settling into the White House, the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics snagged a special guest for an event: JD Vance. His bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy had been published the previous summer, and in the aftermath of Trump’s victory, Vance was widely seen in political and media circles as someone who could explain Trump’s surprising win and the Americans who had supported the former reality TV star. As part of IOP’s series called “America in the Trump Era,” journalist Alex Kotlowitz posed questions to Vance, who at that point was positioning himself as a center-right public intellectual who, as an Appalachian native, had emerged from Trump land and could be a guide for those mystified by Trump’s success.

In a newly uncovered video from 2017, JD Vance says, "Some people who voted for Trump were racists, and they voted for him for racist reasons." He goes on to say that the alt-right and Steve Bannon—but not Trump—helped make the 2016 election "hyper-racialized." pic.twitter.com/pPlJ7uNW5h

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) July 29, 2024

Kotlowitz began with queries focused on the book. Then he shifted to the 2016 election and asked Vance, “Where do you think race played into all this? Because I think the sort of myth is that all these Trump supporters are vehement racists and anti-immigrant. And so where do you think it played?”

Vance replied:

Race definitely played a role in the 2016 election. I think race will always play a role in our country, It’s just sort of a constant fact of American life. And definitely some people who voted for Trump were racists, and they voted for him for racist reasons.

Vance was unequivocal on this point: an undetermined amount of Trump voters were racists.

But he added that he did not believe that racial animus motivated all of Trump’s voters and that he thought the country had become less racist:

I always resist the idea that the real thing driving most Trump voters was racial anxiety or racial animus, partially because I didn’t see it. I mean, the thing that really motivated people to vote for Trump, first in the primary and then in the general election, was three words: jobs, jobs, jobs. Right?… And so it strikes me as a little bizarre to chalk it up to sort of racial animus because, one, the country is less racist now than it was 15 years ago, and we weren’t electing Donald Trump 15 years ago. And, two, that wasn’t the core part of his message and that wasn’t what a lot of his voters were really connecting with.

Still, Vance conceded that the 2016 election had been “hyper-racialized.” Yet he didn’t blame Trump or his electorate for that. Instead, he pointed a finger at extremists within the conservative movement.

There were all these alt-right people, and I’m in an interracial marriage, and I got a lot of stuff directed at me and my wife on online message boards and Twitter and so forth. So I definitely buy this was a racialized discourse unlike any that we’ve had in a really long time. But I don’t blame Trump’s voters for that. The people that I blame for that are actually typically well-educated coastal elitists, people like [avowed white nationalist] Richard Spencer and the alt-right. It’s telling that the alt-right is driven by primarily very well-educated, relatively smart, relatively stable people. It’s not driven by people in the Rust Belt who go on 4chan and talk about Michelle Obama in these really nasty ways. It’s 2,500, I mean whatever the number of people is, I’ve heard estimates up to like 100,000. But these are people who are really well educated and are cognitive elites in their own weird way.

“Like Steve Bannon?” Kotlowitz asked. Vance replied, “Right.”

Vance did not spell out how Bannon and this small band of conservatives had injected racism into the 2016 campaign. (In 2016, before Bannon joined Trump’s campaign as a strategist, he was running Breitbart News and referred to it as the “platform for the alt-right.”) But it was odd that Vance held only the alt-right responsible, rather than Trump, whose rhetoric had appealed to racists and other extremists.

Vance also noted that he was no fan of the “Muslim ban” that Trump proposed during the 2016 campaign: “As soon as he talked about a Muslim ban, all of a sudden a lot of voters actually supported the idea of a Muslim ban. I just don’t think that’s surprising because, again, people follow the rhetoric of their politicians. And so I did worry about that. I continue to worry about that.”

Vance’s remarks at the IOP event were in keeping with his general stance at that time. He was a moderate Never Trumper who had told NPR in 2016 that Trump was “leading the white working class to a very dark place.” He had written that Trump was “cultural heroin.” Privately, he had compared Trump to Hitler.

Vance was walking a fine line those days. He was a Trump critic but wouldn’t go too far in blasting Trump in public. His value was his ability to interpret Trump and his voters for those puzzled by Trump’s win. And he often talked about the need to respect Trump voters.

But on this occasion, Vance acknowledged that a portion of Trump’s base was comprised of racists. And he slammed the alt-right, a slice of the conservative movement long accused of racism that had enthusiastically embraced Trump.

These days, Vance, now a Republican senator from Ohio and Trump’s running mate, is fully aligned with the extreme far right (including whatever remains of the alt-right) and Bannon, the imprisoned former Trump aide who serves as an informal strategist and cheerleader for the Trump movement. It’s inconceivable that Vance would now characterize a chunk of Trump’s voters as racists or badmouth Bannon and his followers. That’s not because the dynamics of Trump’s electorate have changed. It’s because Vance has.

Lawyers for Guo Wengui—the exiled Chinese mogul on trial in New York for allegedly stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from investors in business ventures he launched—rested their case this week with a seeming non-sequitur.

The defense’s last witness was George Higginbotham, a former Justice Department lawyer who pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiracy to make false statements to a bank. Higginbotham did that as part of an illegal lobbying conspiracy that included efforts to pressure the Trump administration to extradite Guo to China, where the mogul faces various criminal charges, including fraud, bribery and rape.

Higginbotham testified that he and his conspirators—including Elliott Broidy, a former top fundraiser for Donald Trump, and Pras Michel, a former member of the Fugees for whom Higginbotham was moonlighting as a lawyer—received around $100 million for their illicit influence efforts and said that he once met with the Chinese ambassador about Guo in an effort to advance the scheme.

But Higginbotham did not say a word about the extensive fraud case that prosecutors have laid out against Guo. That case includes videos in which Guo falsely guaranteed fans that he would not allow them to lose money investing in his business activities, bank statements and testimony from cooperating witnesses indicating that Guo moved investor funds into accounts he controlled, and various evidence that Guo then used the funds to buy stuff like a $26 million mansion, a $4.4 million Bugatti, and two $36,000 mattresses.

Higginbotham, who knew nothing about that case, could offer no information related to the charges Guo faces. His appearance highlights a strategy by Guo’s lawyers to instead play up their client’s self-styled image as a critic of the Chinese Communist Party, and to point out that Chinese agents have made extensive efforts to silence him.

During the trial, Guo’s lawyers have missed no chance to brandish a stipulation they reached with prosecutors, which says that “in 2017, a US law enforcement agency assessed that Mr. Miles Guo was the highest priority of China repatriation efforts” aimed at CCP critics within the Chinese diaspora.

Guo lawyer Sidhardha Kamaraju cited the stipulation repeatedly during the first portion of his summation on Wednesday. Kamaraju argued that CCP targeting of Guo and the scheme Higginbotham took part in gave Guo “reason to believe that the CCP could influence DOJ employees.”

Last week, the defense elicited testimony from Paul Doran, a corporate risk adviser who testified as an expert on China. Doran said that Guo, in broadcasts in 2017, had “exposed corruption at the highest levels in China, which is extremely embarrassing for President Xi [Jinping] and his close circle.”

“In my professional opinion, Mr. Guo is public enemy number one in China,” Doran said.

This focus on the Chinese government’s dislike of Guo is, arguably, responsive to the prosecution’s contention that the anti-CCP movement Guo built with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was effectively a con—a means of winning the trust of CCP-hating Chinese emigres in order to fleece them. One of Guo’s lawyers, Sabrina Shroff, has also suggested that Chinese hacking efforts explain why Guo created numerous bank accounts. Prosecutors say it was for money laundering.

Another reason to highlight China’s beef with Guo may be to hint at a claim that Guo’s supporters have made since his arrest last year: that the Justice Department’s prosecution of Guo is itself the result of nefarious Chinese influence efforts.

Judge Analisa Torres has barred Guo’s team from making this argument in court, ruling that the theory is unsubstantiated and prejudicial. And though Higginbotham’s illegal lobbying had nothing do with his DOJ day job—he was in fact fired as result of his moonlighting—prosecutors and Torres have accused the defense of hoping that Higginbotham’s onetime employment at the department now prosecuting Guo will confuse jurors.

“Clearly bringing that up is merely a rather clumsy way of trying to link the prosecution in this case with corruption and the Chinese government,” Torres said during a sidebar with attorneys on Monday.

Guo’s lawyers did call witnesses aimed at undermining aspects of the government’s case. And Kamaraju argued in detail Wednesday that prosecutors have not proved Guo committed fraud. But much of the defense’s focus has been on asserting that Guo’s attacks on the CCP were sincere. Shroff, in the defense’s opening statement, called this campaign “the essence of [Guo’s] entire being.” That assertion tracks the biography Guo has promoted since 2017 and may have pleased the scores of his supporters who packed the Manhattan courtroom throughout the trial.

The problem, though, is that Guo’s beef with the CCP, the centerpiece of his defense, is not necessarily exculpatory. Guo could be a real target of Chinese spies while also being a fraud. Guo’s lawyers might lack better options, but they are left banking on the hope that at least some jurors find the freedom-fighter story they are selling so appealing—and perhaps so confusing—that they overlook the mountain of the evidence against Guo.

Federal prosecutors, who are presumably eager to keep their sprawling RICO case as simple as possible, have regularly responded to defense efforts to position Guo as an uncompromising CCP critic by returning jurors’ focus to his alleged crimes.

As a result, the defense, for much of the seven-week trial, has had fairly free reign to present a simplified, and highly dubious, version of their client as a lifelong dissident. Jurors, all of whom attested they knew nothing about Guo’s case before the trial, remain presumably unaware of years of robust questioning of “whether Guo is, in fact, a dissident or a double agent,” as federal Judge Lewis Liman—presiding over a lawsuit in the same courthouse as Guo’s current trial— put it in a 2021. At the time, Liman concluded that the “evidence at trial does not permit the Court to” resolve that question and that “others will have to determine who the true Guo is.”

Last year, prosecutors filed a heavily redacted motion revealing that federal agents in 2019 executed search warrants against Guo that resulted in the seizure of “more than 100 electronic devices and documents” from a safe in one of his homes. That search was not related to the fraud case for which Guo is currently on trial, the filing said. And according to a former lawyer for a Guo codefendant, it was carried out by “counterintelligence agents from the FBI”—an indication that the feds may have suspected Guo of ties to foreign espionage. But prosecutors have not mentioned that raid in open court. Nor have they pointed to lawsuits alleging Guo is CCP agent, a charge Guo denies.

But as the defense made their case over the last few weeks, prosecutors have gone further than they had before in noting that the truth is more complicated than Guo’s attorneys suggest, and have even highlighted some of the evidence of Guo’s ties to Chinese intelligence.

On Tuesday, Guo’s lawyers used Higginbotham’s testimony to introduce transcripts from 2017 phone calls in which Liu Yanping, a top official in China’s ministry of security, appeared to threaten to arrest Guo’s family members in China in a effort silence Guo’s attacks on the CCP, or convince him to return to China.

But the calls also included discussion of an “agreement” between Guo and Liu in which Guo promised to would limit his criticisms to certain CCP officials, notably excluding Xi. On cross examination, Assistant US Attorney Juliana Murray pointed to a portion of one of those calls in which Guo said he “just wanted to protect my money, my life, and my wealth.” He added that “I still love the country and the party.”

Guo has said these statements were coerced. Still, about three months later, he sent a letter to Communist Party leaders in which he offered to “desist from revealing information” if they dropped efforts to extradite him and unfroze his assets. “I will definitely devote my life to…uphold[ing] the core beliefs of Chairman Xi, and sacrifice my everything for Chairman Xi,” Guo wrote.

Earlier in the trial, on June 3, Assistant US Attorney Ryan Finkel also brought up Guo’s past ties to another senior Security Ministry official, named Ma Jian. Ma’s influence, as Mother Jones and others have reported, appears to have helped Guo make a fortune in Chinese real estate.

In his summation, Kamaraju suggested that Guo fled from China in 2014 due to his criticism of the CCP. That’s not true. Guo fled China due Ma’s 2014 arrest on allegations that included accepting bribes from Guo. (Guo has denied bribing Ma and all other charges he faces in China.)

But Guo’s ties to Ma suggest Guo may have actually been a beneficiary of the corrupt security apparatus he later faulted, part of a faction that lost out in an internal CCP power struggle. Finkel hit that point while questioning Doran.

“To be a billionaire in China requires some connections or help from the CCP, right?” Finkel asked Doran, the defense’s China’s expert. Doran agreed.

“You know Miles Guo lent money to Ma Jian’s sister, right?” Finkel asked Doran. “Ma Jian’s sister then spent that money to buy properties…Then Guo bought back those properties from Ma Jian’s sister. Did you know that? And this was designed so Ma Jian can make a profit.”

Doran said he knew none of that.

Finkel also used Doran’s presence on the stand to ask about a notable item FBI agents found during a search of Guo’s home last year: a box with the logo of the People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese military, on it. The defense had previously introduced a photo of Lieutenant General Bi Yi, head of the PLA branch purportedly responsible for cyber spying—part of their effort to highlight China’s targeting of Guo.

Finkel showed the jury a picture of the logo on the box from Guo’s home alongside a picture of the logo on Bi’s hat. They matched.

Shortly after this, though, the government returned to their main argument. Doran had testified that he was targeted by Chinese agents while living in China. Noting this, Finkel asked the witness if he “ever raised money by making false promises online” or “committed fraud.” Doran said he had not.

“Being targeted by the CCP doesn’t give you license to do those things, does it?” the prosecutor asked.

“No,” Doran said.

Lawyers for Guo Wengui—the exiled Chinese mogul on trial in New York for allegedly stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from investors in business ventures he launched—rested their case this week with a seeming non-sequitur.

The defense’s last witness was George Higginbotham, a former Justice Department lawyer who pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiracy to make false statements to a bank. Higginbotham did that as part of an illegal lobbying conspiracy that included efforts to pressure the Trump administration to extradite Guo to China, where the mogul faces various criminal charges, including fraud, bribery and rape.

Higginbotham testified that he and his conspirators—including Elliott Broidy, a former top fundraiser for Donald Trump, and Pras Michel, a former member of the Fugees for whom Higginbotham was moonlighting as a lawyer—received around $100 million for their illicit influence efforts and said that he once met with the Chinese ambassador about Guo in an effort to advance the scheme.

But Higginbotham did not say a word about the extensive fraud case that prosecutors have laid out against Guo. That case includes videos in which Guo falsely guaranteed fans that he would not allow them to lose money investing in his business activities, bank statements and testimony from cooperating witnesses indicating that Guo moved investor funds into accounts he controlled, and various evidence that Guo then used the funds to buy stuff like a $26 million mansion, a $4.4 million Bugatti, and two $36,000 mattresses.

Higginbotham, who knew nothing about that case, could offer no information related to the charges Guo faces. His appearance highlights a strategy by Guo’s lawyers to instead play up their client’s self-styled image as a critic of the Chinese Communist Party, and to point out that Chinese agents have made extensive efforts to silence him.

During the trial, Guo’s lawyers have missed no chance to brandish a stipulation they reached with prosecutors, which says that “in 2017, a US law enforcement agency assessed that Mr. Miles Guo was the highest priority of China repatriation efforts” aimed at CCP critics within the Chinese diaspora.

Guo lawyer Sidhardha Kamaraju cited the stipulation repeatedly during the first portion of his summation on Wednesday. Kamaraju argued that CCP targeting of Guo and the scheme Higginbotham took part in gave Guo “reason to believe that the CCP could influence DOJ employees.”

Last week, the defense elicited testimony from Paul Doran, a corporate risk adviser who testified as an expert on China. Doran said that Guo, in broadcasts in 2017, had “exposed corruption at the highest levels in China, which is extremely embarrassing for President Xi [Jinping] and his close circle.”

“In my professional opinion, Mr. Guo is public enemy number one in China,” Doran said.

This focus on the Chinese government’s dislike of Guo is, arguably, responsive to the prosecution’s contention that the anti-CCP movement Guo built with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was effectively a con—a means of winning the trust of CCP-hating Chinese emigres in order to fleece them. One of Guo’s lawyers, Sabrina Shroff, has also suggested that Chinese hacking efforts explain why Guo created numerous bank accounts. Prosecutors say it was for money laundering.

Another reason to highlight China’s beef with Guo may be to hint at a claim that Guo’s supporters have made since his arrest last year: that the Justice Department’s prosecution of Guo is itself the result of nefarious Chinese influence efforts.

Judge Analisa Torres has barred Guo’s team from making this argument in court, ruling that the theory is unsubstantiated and prejudicial. And though Higginbotham’s illegal lobbying had nothing do with his DOJ day job—he was in fact fired as result of his moonlighting—prosecutors and Torres have accused the defense of hoping that Higginbotham’s onetime employment at the department now prosecuting Guo will confuse jurors.

“Clearly bringing that up is merely a rather clumsy way of trying to link the prosecution in this case with corruption and the Chinese government,” Torres said during a sidebar with attorneys on Monday.

Guo’s lawyers did call witnesses aimed at undermining aspects of the government’s case. And Kamaraju argued in detail Wednesday that prosecutors have not proved Guo committed fraud. But much of the defense’s focus has been on asserting that Guo’s attacks on the CCP were sincere. Shroff, in the defense’s opening statement, called this campaign “the essence of [Guo’s] entire being.” That assertion tracks the biography Guo has promoted since 2017 and may have pleased the scores of his supporters who packed the Manhattan courtroom throughout the trial.

The problem, though, is that Guo’s beef with the CCP, the centerpiece of his defense, is not necessarily exculpatory. Guo could be a real target of Chinese spies while also being a fraud. Guo’s lawyers might lack better options, but they are left banking on the hope that at least some jurors find the freedom-fighter story they are selling so appealing—and perhaps so confusing—that they overlook the mountain of the evidence against Guo.

Federal prosecutors, who are presumably eager to keep their sprawling RICO case as simple as possible, have regularly responded to defense efforts to position Guo as an uncompromising CCP critic by returning jurors’ focus to his alleged crimes.

As a result, the defense, for much of the seven-week trial, has had fairly free reign to present a simplified, and highly dubious, version of their client as a lifelong dissident. Jurors, all of whom attested they knew nothing about Guo’s case before the trial, remain presumably unaware of years of robust questioning of “whether Guo is, in fact, a dissident or a double agent,” as federal Judge Lewis Liman—presiding over a lawsuit in the same courthouse as Guo’s current trial— put it in a 2021. At the time, Liman concluded that the “evidence at trial does not permit the Court to” resolve that question and that “others will have to determine who the true Guo is.”

Last year, prosecutors filed a heavily redacted motion revealing that federal agents in 2019 executed search warrants against Guo that resulted in the seizure of “more than 100 electronic devices and documents” from a safe in one of his homes. That search was not related to the fraud case for which Guo is currently on trial, the filing said. And according to a former lawyer for a Guo codefendant, it was carried out by “counterintelligence agents from the FBI”—an indication that the feds may have suspected Guo of ties to foreign espionage. But prosecutors have not mentioned that raid in open court. Nor have they pointed to lawsuits alleging Guo is CCP agent, an allegation Guo denies.

But as the defense made their case over the last few weeks, prosecutors have gone further than they had before in noting that the truth is more complicated than Guo’s attorneys suggest, and have even highlighted some of the evidence of Guo’s ties to Chinese intelligence.

On Tuesday, Guo’s lawyers used Higginbotham’s testimony to introduce transcripts from 2017 phone calls in which Liu Yanping, a top official in China’s ministry of security, appeared to threaten to arrest Guo’s family members in China in a effort silence Guo’s attacks on the CCP, or convince him to return to China.

But the calls also included discussion of an “agreement” between Guo and Liu in which Guo promised to would limit his criticisms to certain CCP officials, notably excluding Xi. On cross examination, Assistant US Attorney Juliana Murray pointed to a portion of one of those calls in which Guo said he “just wanted to protect my money, my life, and my wealth.” He added that “I still love the country and the party.”

Guo has said these statements were coerced. Still, about three months later, he sent a letter to Communist Party leaders in which he offered to “desist from revealing information” if they dropped efforts to extradite him and unfroze his assets. “I will definitely devote my life to…uphold[ing] the core beliefs of Chairman Xi, and sacrifice my everything for Chairman Xi,” Guo wrote.

Earlier in the trial, on June 3, Assistant US Attorney Ryan Finkel also brought up Guo’s past ties to another senior Security Ministry official, named Ma Jian. Ma’s influence, as Mother Jones and others have reported, appears to have helped Guo make a fortune in Chinese real estate.

In his summation, Kamaraju suggested that Guo fled China in 2014 due to his criticism of the CCP. That’s not true. Guo fled China due Ma’s 2014 arrest on allegations that included accepting bribes from Guo. (Guo has denied bribing Ma and all other charges he faces in China.)

But Guo’s ties to Ma suggest Guo may have actually been a beneficiary of the corrupt security apparatus he later faulted, part of a faction that lost out in an internal CCP power struggle. Finkel hit that point while questioning Doran.

“To be a billionaire in China requires some connections or help from the CCP, right?” Finkel asked Doran, the defense’s China’s expert. Doran agreed.

“You know Miles Guo lent money to Ma Jian’s sister, right?” Finkel asked Doran. “Ma Jian’s sister then spent that money to buy properties…Then Guo bought back those properties from Ma Jian’s sister. Did you know that? And this was designed so Ma Jian can make a profit.”

Doran said he knew none of that.

Finkel also used Doran’s presence on the stand to ask about a notable item FBI agents found during a search of Guo’s home last year: a box with the logo of the People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese military, on it. The defense had previously introduced a photo of Lieutenant General Bi Yi, head of the PLA branch purportedly responsible for cyber spying—part of their effort to highlight China’s targeting of Guo.

Finkel showed the jury a picture of the logo on the box from Guo’s home alongside a picture of the logo on Bi’s hat. They matched.

Shortly after this, though, the government returned to their main argument. Doran had testified that he was targeted by Chinese agents while living in China. Noting this, Finkel asked the witness if he “ever raised money by making false promises online” or “committed fraud.” Doran said he had not.

“Being targeted by the CCP doesn’t give you license to do those things, does it?” the prosecutor asked.

“No,” Doran said.

Donald Trump confidante and far-right agitator Steve Bannon talks for nearly four hours most days of the week on his show, War Room. But starting Monday, the only people who will be listening to Bannon will be other inmates at a low-security federal prison in Danbury, Conn.

Two years ago, a federal jury found him guilty of contempt of Congress for ignoring a subpoena related to the investigation into the events of January 6 at the US Capitol. A judge sentenced Bannon to four months in prison. Last week, the Supreme Court finally rejected his last appeal, and Bannon will report to prison on Monday.

In the meantime, he seems to be trying to squeeze in as much talk as he possibly can before he’s silenced for most of the presidential campaign. An unrepentant Bannon has been making the rounds of the same mainstream media he claims to despise. He told Time magazine last week that he feels ready for prison. “I don’t fear this at all… I’m a political prisoner,” Bannon said. “I’m at war with the ruling class of this country… I’ve dedicated my life to this. I don’t have a social life. This is my life.” He added that Americans should not expect him to come out of prison “ripped,” as the 70-year-old pugilist would be toiling away in the library rather than working out.

On Saturday, he spoke with NBC News and doubled down on what sounded to innocent observers like calls for political violence:

When asked what his endgame is, Bannon told NBC News it was “victory or death of this republic.”

“If we don’t win the—first of all, they shred the Constitution. It is the death of the constitutional American republic we know,” he continued.

In an interview with ABC’s Jonathan Karl, which aired Sunday, Bannon declared that Trump was going to win the election “in a landslide. ” He also pushed back on suggestions that he has helped incite political violence with his frequent references to civil war. But when Karl asked him whether he’d accept the results of the 2024 election and also urge his supporters to do the same, Bannon dodged. “Have you asked a Democrat this question, yes or no?” he responded.

“I haven’t seen Democrats storm the Capitol to try to stop an election,” Karl replied. “And by the way, I have no problem asking Democrats if they’re going to respect the election.”

When pressed about former Pres. Trump’s vow for “retribution” for his opponents if he returns to office, longtime aide Steve Bannon tells @JonKarl, “What we're saying is we want justice. We want to have full investigations.” https://t.co/k6RUJxeiWA pic.twitter.com/ypST82bXr8

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) June 30, 2024

Karl also asked Bannon about Trump’s plans for a second term, and Trump’s “retribution” campaign against his perceived enemies. Warming to the topic, Bannon ticked off several people he believed would be investigated and possibly sent to prison, including Trump’s former Attorney General Bill Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray. Among the top agenda items that he said Trump would focus on were “mass deportations,” and “trying to dismantle the administrative state brick by brick.”

Bannon has made many predictions about the MAGA movement’s eventual takeover of the country, but Karl pointed out during his interview that many of Bannon’s favored candidates lost in the last two midterm elections.

“This is a populist nationalist revolution,” Bannon replied. “It’s a process.”

He has no concerns about Trump’s ability to beat Biden, however. “We have 100 percent certainty we can beat Biden and beat him big, take the Senate, and pick up seats in the House,” Bannon insisted.

Even so, Bannon had not been in favor of Trump debating Biden on CNN last week, especially under the terms of the debate that allowed the moderators to cut the mikes when a candidate ran over his allotted time. He also believed that because the debate was so early in the campaign, it would give the Democrats time to swap out Biden for a better candidate, as he’d been predicting they’d do all along. “I didn’t think Biden would be the nominee,” he told Karl.

But he said Trump had, in effect, taken one for the team and participated in the debate for the country, suggesting that the former president had intended to show the world just how much Biden’s mental faculties had declined. Next time, he said, “President Trump should debate who the Democratic Party nominee is,” Bannon said. “It’s not a guy named Joe Biden.”

Bannon also has spoken directly to his supporters who watch his show, preparing them for his time off-air. On Friday, he told them not to send him any letters, which is promised he would not read. Instead, while he is locked up, he urged them to get to work.

“Use your time, husband your resources, and use your time. And your time is not sending me some missive in prison that I’m not going to read. You know why I’m not going to read?” he asked. “Because I’m going to be working. Outside of my job in prison, I’m going to be working the rest of the hours on what? Total and complete victory.”

Bannon will leave prison shortly before the November election.