Guo Wengui's Murder Board

What do Guo Wengui, The Fugees, Basquiat, Elliot Broidy, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, Picasso, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ice Cube, Mike Flynn, and Bill Barr have in common?

This week, the trial of Gui Wengui is underway. He was arrested and has been detained as a flight risk since March 2023 on 12 felony charges including securities fraud, wire fraud, unlawful monetary transactions and conspiracy, including for money laundering. He swindled his followers and investors out of nearly $1B using crypto schemes and a bullshit media company (sound familiar?)

Shortly after his arrest, and while FBI agents were still searching his luxury apartment, it caught on fire. Investigators say there were accelerants ignited in a closet in Guo’s bedroom - which seemed super fishy - and in recent court filings, Guo wanted to use the defense that the fire was set by the FBI. The FBI responded saying “if you use that defense, we will present evidence that Guo started the fire himself.”

I’ve been covering Guo Wengui for years because of his connections to Steve Bannon and a vast array of bad guys connected to Donald Trump, and since his trial is now underway, I thought I’d dig up that old murder board and remind everyone how I first stumbled upon his name back in the day. It’s a story so bonkers that it prompted a listener to send me this:

At the center of this murder board is the singularity from which no one can escape - the largest kleptocracy case in history - 1MDB. The Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and his pal Low Taek Jho - more commonly known as Jho Low - plundered and then laundered nearly $1B from One Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB); a government-run strategic development company.

In October 2020, one of Donald trumps former RNC deputy finance chairs and former deputy on trump’s inaugural Elliott Broidy (who stepped down from the RNC for allegedly having Michael Cohen pay his mistress $1.6M to abort his baby and keep quiet about it) pled guilty to accepting $9M from Jho Low to lobby the US Attorney General, then-president Trump, and other high level DoJ officials to drop the 1MDB investigation. I know that’s a lot to take in, but stick with me.

Broidy was also wrapped up in the Mueller investigation because companies owned by him and Tom Barrack (Trump’s rich pal that chaired his inaugural committee) paid Rick Gates while he was being questioned by special counsel Mueller in the Manafort investigation. Broidy was separately under investigation in the SDNY for allegedly using his spot on the inaugural committee to pursue deals with associates in Romania and Angola. Donald gave Broidy a full pardon before he left office. Cool cool.

Now, Tom Barrack has his own murder board, but let’s stay on the Broidy thread. Two other people pled guilty along with Broidy for the foreign lobbying scheme including a guy from INSIDE the DoJ named Higginbotham, and a co-conspirator named Nickie Lum Davis. They both cooperated with the feds in the case against Broidy.

But there was another person caught up in 1MDB. Someone who had tried to lobby the US to extradite a Chinese Dissident named - you guessed it - Guo Wengui. He helped Jho Low funnel millions into US bank accounts including Broidy’s. That person was charged and convicted for his crimes last year and awaits sentencing. It’s founding Fugees member Pras Michel.

Guo Wengui, incidentally, owned the yacht Steve Bannon was arrested on by the post office cops, hyped a leak about Hunter Biden’s laptop to the trump rag New York Post, and bankrolled one of the multiple alt-right social media platforms called GETTR that was immediately hacked.

Bannon is this whole other story as I’m sure you know (he’s about to go to prison for ignoring a congressional subpoena , and goes on trial in Judge Merchan’s court this September for his We Build the Wall fraud scheme), but another fun fact is that Bannon was the CFO of a company owned buy a guy named Kwatinetz that sued a Qatari businessman named Al-Rumaihi along with rapper Ice Cube over failing to fund their new basketball league. Al Rumaihi tried to bribe Ice Cube’s partner to set up a meeting between Qatar and Bannon, and when Ice Cube’s partner said he was offended that Al-Rumaihi would insinuate either he or Bannon could be bribed, Al-Rumaihi laughed and said “do you think Flynn turned down our money?” Whoa!

Where was I? Ice Cube, the Fugees.. OH YES. 1MDB. I bet you didn’t know one of Jho Low’s money laundering vehicles was a movie production company that fronted $9M to help fund Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. Once all the shenanigans were uncovered by the feds, Leonardo DiCaprio had to return a Picasso and a Basquiat (also money laundering vehicles) gifted to him by Jho Low.

It’s hard to imagine that Guo Wengui, a founding member of the Fugees, Leo DiCaprio, Picasso, Ice Cube, and Basquiat would all end up in Donald Trump’s murder board, but life is quirky when you connect the dots.

~ AG