A Chinese citizen was arrested after police said he
repeatedly tried to get into former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago
Club in Palm Beach.
According to the Palm Beach Post, Zijie Li,
38, of El Monte, California, claimed that he had documents that tie his
home country's government to the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump
during his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The shooter, Thomas
Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, was killed by Secret
Service agents after the bullets he fired struck Trump's ear, narrowly
missing his skull, and hit three of his supporters, killing former
Buffalo Township Fire Chief Corey Comperatore.
Li's
first attempt to reach Mar-a-Lago was the day before, at about 8 p.m.
July 19, when he pulled up to the estate's main gate on South Ocean
Boulevard in a gray Toyota Prius and told Secret Service agents that he
had documents showing China was involved in the attempted assassination,
according to an arrest report. Trump was not at Mar-a-Lago at the time —
he was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for the Republican National Convention
that week.
Agents told Li that he was trespassing and was not
allowed into Mar-a-Lago, and the Palm Beach Police Department issued him
a written warning, the report said. Police told Li that he could not
return to Mar-a-Lago or he would be arrested.
Town security
cameras show that Li's next visit to Palm Beach was July 22, when he
twice drove east and then west again over the Royal Park Bridge, first
in the morning and then in the afternoon, the arrest report said. Trump
was at Mar-a-Lago that day, having returned from Wisconsin very early
the previous morning.
On July 30, Li was spotted at about 5:40
p.m. driving toward the security checkpoint for Mar-a-Lago at South
County Road and South Ocean Boulevard, the report said. Li was blocking a
lane of traffic, so a Palm Beach Police officer stopped him and noticed
that Mar-a-Lago's address, 1100 S. Ocean Blvd., was on Li's GPS system,
according to the arrest report.
Li was released and left town
heading west over the Royal Park Bridge, but returned less than an hour
later when his car was spotted south of Mar-a-Lago on South Ocean
Boulevard, the report said. This time, Palm Beach Police and Secret
Service agents again stopped him and told him not to return to
Mar-a-Lago.
But, police said, Li kept trying.
His car
first traveled east and then west over the Royal Park Bridge north of
Mar-a-Lago between 8 and 8:30 a.m., according to town security cameras.
Li's Prius was then spotted minutes later going east over the Southern
Boulevard Bridge next to Mar-a-Lago, and he drove past the Secret
Service checkpoint and south to Lake Worth Beach, the arrest report
said.
He came back again about 10 a.m., driving east on Southern
Boulevard across the Intracoastal Waterway and past the Secret Service
checkpoints, trying to enter Mar-a-Lago at the estate's southern gate,
police said.
At that point, he was back on Mar-a-Lago property
and in violation of the trespassing warning, the report said. When
security told Li that he couldn't enter Mar-a-Lago, he left again — but
this time, officers were looking for him.
Palm Beach Police found
him back in Palm Beach, and Li was arrested at the intersection of
Royal Palm Way and South County Road, north of Mar-a-Lago.
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