In March 2019, the night before a fund-raiser at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, a zealous supporter passed out thousands of dollars in cash in a Florida hotel room, according to federal prosecutors.
The supporter, Xinyue Lou, had struck a deal with Mr. Trump’s fund-raising committee: If he raised $25,000, he would receive two V.I.P. tickets to the event and two slots for attendees to take photos with Mr. Trump.
He had secured the money, and on this night, he was repaying the people who had helped conceal its true source, the prosecutors said.
Mr. Lou, also known as Daniel, had recruited so-called straw donors to support Mr. Trump’s re-election efforts, according to prosecutors. They had given money on behalf of an unnamed Chinese national who wanted to attend the event and take a photo with Mr. Trump, but could not make campaign contributions as a foreigner, according to prosecutors.
Last year, prosecutors said Mr. Lou’s efforts were criminal. He had sought to circumvent campaign contribution limits, they said, by concealing the source of the donations.
Mr. Lou, who lives in Staten Island, is now on trial in a Brooklyn federal courtroom. His case, which came as part of a Justice Department investigation into illegal contributions made by Chinese nationals during the 2020 election, was charged under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. It is now in the hands of Mr. Trump’s Justice Department.
Mr. Trump has long railed against what he says is a system of justice that has been turned against him and his supporters. In his second term, he has sought retribution, pushing for charges against his adversaries. He has pardoned supporters convicted of crimes, and his Justice Department has ended investigations of them.
In a filing last month, federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York sought to prevent Mr. Lou’s lawyers from arguing that he had been the victim of selective prosecution because of his support for Mr. Trump.
“There is absolutely no evidence that the defendant was selectively prosecuted,” the prosecutors wrote. They added that Mr. Lou should not be able to argue that he was being prosecuted “simply because of his support for” Mr. Trump.
Lawyers for Mr. Lou have sought to exclude certain evidence from the trial, including witness statements, that would suggest Mr. Lou was “coordinating a shadowy effort to steer Chinese funds to President Trump’s re-election campaign.”
Neither Mr. Trump nor the Republican Party is accused of wrongdoing. A representative for the Republican National Committee did not respond to a request for comment.
China’s broad attempts to influence politics in the United States — its main geopolitical rival — have caught the attention of federal prosecutors in recent years.
In New York City, social clubs backed by the Chinese government have quietly tried to influence local elections. Linda Sun, a former aide to two New York governors, was indicted last year on charges that she was working as an unauthorized Chinese agent. In July, a Republican donor from Long Island pleaded guilty to charges that she had swindled Chinese investors who paid millions to gain access to Mr. Trump and to secure investors’ visas.
In 2020 and in 2022, the Federal Election Commission informed Mr. Lou that he was under investigation. He was interviewed by F.B.I. agents in late February and early March 2024, and was soon after charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and one count of making contributions in the name of others.
Mr. Lou, a Chinese American businessman, told agents that he had once worked for the Chinese government’s press office, which manufactures propaganda for the Chinese Communist Party, according to prosecutors, and that he frequently traveled to China in the 2010s and met with government officials there.
Since 2016, Mr. Lou has contributed nearly $100,000 to Mr. Trump’s re-election efforts, other Republican candidates and Republican causes more broadly, according to F.E.C. filings. Mr. Lou, who has been out on bail, was allowed by Judge Ann M. Donnelly to travel to Washington to attend Mr. Trump’s inauguration in January.
Prosecutors plan to show jurors emails between Mr. Lou and an unnamed co-conspirator who provided the money, and messages sent to the people he recruited for the scheme before the 2019 fund-raiser at Mar-a-Lago. According to prosecutors, Mr. Lou and the co-conspirator discussed “various budgeting scenarios” that would allow them to gain access to the event and obtain photos with Mr. Trump.
But after Mr. Lou secured the tickets to the event, he was told by the fund-raising committee that the Chinese nationals on his guest list could not take a photo with Mr. Trump, because they were not American, prosecutors said. He expressed his disappointment, saying he had “made so much effort to raise the funds.”
“Well, a rule is a rule and I am happy to respect and follow it,” Mr. Lou wrote back over email, according to prosecutors.
Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.
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