Born into poverty in rural China, Mr. Guo, whose present age has been variously characterised as 53 to 56, developed a refined type, preferring tailor-made Brioni fits and luxurious vehicles. When Federal Bureau of Investigation brokers raided his properties final 12 months, they discovered two mattresses price $36,000 every, a $31,000 mattress, a $140,000 piano and a number of other vehicles, together with a Bugatti Chiron Super Sport, a Lamborghini and a Rolls-Royce.
In exile, Mr. Guo mounted a marketing campaign in 2017 to discredit China’s anticorruption chief forward of an necessary Communist Party assembly that fall. In doing so, he constructed up a big following of supporters each inside China and among the many huge Chinese diaspora, although his claims about corruption within the prime ranks of the Communist Party couldn’t be substantiated by The New York Times.
That identical 12 months, the Chinese authorities mounted an unsuccessful marketing campaign to repatriate Mr. Guo, tapping Steve Wynn, the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee who ran a on line casino resort within the Chinese territory of Macau, together with Elliott Broidy, the deputy chairman, to influence Mr. Trump.
By then, Mr. Guo had turn out to be a member of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla., membership, and had begun bringing distinguished allies of the president into his orbit, together with Mr. Bannon later that 12 months.
As the 2020 election approached, Mr. Guo’s U.S.-based media community, GTV, tried to affect the election by selling fabricated contents of a laptop computer belonging to Hunter Biden, a son of then-candidate Joe Biden. After the election, his community helped fund the so-called Million MAGA March in help of Mr. Trump. Mr. Guo additionally helped finance a court docket problem to Mr. Biden’s election victory in Georgia, Mother Jones journal reported.