On Wednesday, a federal judge dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit, which looked to force Steve Wynn, the longtime casino developer to register as a foreign agent due to lobbying work it said he performed at the behest of the Chinese government at the time of the Trump administration.
James Boasberg, U.S. District Judge didn’t address in his 20-page order if not Wynn had been functioning as a Beijing agent. Rather he said he accords with Wynn that the department couldn’t force him now to register as a foreign agent since any relationship with Wynn with the Chinese government came to an end in 2017.
The order is a reversal of fortune for the stepped-up Justice Department’s efforts for enforcing year old law called the Foreign Agents Registration Act. It needs anyone who is campaigning on behalf of a foreign entity or government to register their work with the United States government.
Steve’s lawyers Robert Luskin and Reid Weingarten said that they are delighted that the District Court has dismissed the ill-conceived lawsuit of the government and Mr. Wynn has never acted as a Chinese government’s agent and didn’t lobbied on its behalf.
In a statement, the Justice Department has stated that it respectfully disagrees with the ruling of the day and takes into account the options in the litigations. They are committed to implementing lobbying laws.
The department for the last four years had repeatedly advised Wynn to register. It had also sued him in May for forcing him to do so, stating it as a suit that was the first of its kind in over a decade.
The complaint allegedly states that Wynn, a one-time finance chairman of the Republican National Committee and Republican donor had lobbied, Donald Trump, the then president, and his members for several months in 2017 for expelling from the US a Chinese citizen who had been charged in China for corruption and had been seeking political asylum in America.
