U.S. Accuses Steve Wynn of Lobbying Trump on Behalf of China

The Justice Department said that by serving as a middleman for the Chinese government, Mr. Wynn acted as a foreign agent and must register as one.

The Justice Department sued the former casino mogul Stephen Wynn on Tuesday, saying he had made repeated requests on behalf of the Chinese government to Donald J. Trump when he was president and seeking to force Mr. Wynn to register as a foreign agent.

In 2017, Mr. Wynn pushed Mr. Trump to deport a Chinese businessman who had sought asylum in the United States, according to the lawsuit. At the time, Mr. Wynn was the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, a role he had been handpicked for by Mr. Trump.

The suit accuses Mr. Wynn of broaching the topic several times, including at a dinner with Mr. Trump and other administration officials in late June 2017, when he passed along passport photos of the individual to Mr. Trump’s secretary; during unscheduled meetings with Mr. Trump in August of that year; and by phone while aboard a yacht off the coast of Italy. Mr. Trump told Mr. Wynn he would look into the matter, according to the suit.

The Chinese businessman is not named in the suit, but he matches the description of Guo Wengui, a billionaire real estate magnate and an outspoken critic of Chinese government self-dealing who formed an alliance with Stephen K. Bannon, a former White House strategist for Mr. Trump. Mr. Guo fled China in 2014 in anticipation of corruption charges that he said were retaliatory. The effort to have him returned to China was ultimately unsuccessful, according to the lawsuit.

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