Inna Yashchyshyn is the daughter of a Russian truck driver who emigrated to Canada. But this name is known only to very few people. Her cover surname: Anna de Rothschild, heir to the banking dynasty. In the salons of the private club Mar-a-Lago, in Florida, the young woman filled the notables with anecdotes about her alleged childhood in Monaco. The caciques in striped suits, a baseball cap screwed on their heads, shout out the rural stories of the young woman in the hotel-restaurant belonging to the Trump family, who also have a personal residence there. Several Republican party barons became attached to Anna and she became a distinguished guest at charity galas.
Why did Inna Yashchyshyn create a second identity for herself? His story intrigues… At least since the collective of American investigative journalists, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, identified him in a photograph dating from May 2021 surveying the golf green of the residence of Donald Trump. At this time, the billionaire is still president of the first world power. In fact, for several weeks, Inna Yashchyshyn was able to mingle with the family and friends of the former president.
During his visits, piles of documents classified as defense secret relating to the military capabilities of a foreign power as well as the Korean conflict or nuclear intelligence lie negligently in several rooms of the house. If there is today no formal proof that Yashchyshyn could have been a spy, the idea that a person under cover, provided with false identity documents, could have accessed the privacy of a US President-in-Office makes many security specialists pale. Above all, Inna Yashchyshyn is no exception, and the misadventures of some guests did not cause the president to exercise caution.
In November 2019, Yujing Zhang, a Chinese national, was sentenced to eight months in prison and deported a few months later to China after being found guilty of trespassing and lying to secret service agents. She had been arrested after breaking into Donald Trump’s house on several occasions in possession of four mobile phones, a computer, an external hard drive and a USB key which were later discovered to contain malware. In his hotel room, investigators found nine USB sticks, five SIM cards and a “signal detector” device to locate hidden microphones or cameras. The case of Yujing Zhang illustrates what became of Mar-a-Lago when Trump was in power: a nest of spies…
This is the picture that emerges from the first indiscretions stale by the American press of the mass of documents seized by the FBI, during the search carried out at the beginning of August at the former American president’s home. Investigators suspect the former tenant of the White House of having violated an American law on espionage, which very strictly regulates the possession of confidential documents. Several dozen files marked “classified” were left empty within the presidential residence, which may suggest that sensitive documents may have been lost or destroyed, or even given away. Since May 2021, the National Archives Agency has been asking Donald Trump, as required by federal law, to return documents he may still have in his possession.
But the FBI will not be able to go further in the investigation. He has just been dispossessed of his own investigation. At the end of a conciliation bringing together the federal agency and the Trump camp, an independent investigator must be appointed, in the coming days, to analyze the searched elements, decided justice. This did not fail to react Peter Strzok, former deputy director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division and agent behind the investigations led by Judge Mueller into possible collusion between Donald Trump’s entourage and Moscow. Strzok speaks of a “particularly concerning” situation since there has been “an absolute lack of any kind of control or remembering of who had access to Mar-a-Lago at any given time”.
The search affidavit, released last Friday, reports “classified documents strewn throughout the facility.” Some notes were also located near a swimming pool regularly used for club events. The sensitive documents could thus have been viewed by members of that same club, staff or dozens of unscreened guests at wedding receptions, parties and fundraisers. Heaven for intelligence operatives.
“I’m sure Mar-a-Lago has been targeted by Russian intelligence and other intelligence over the past 18 or 20 months, and if they were able to get individuals into this facility and access to those documents, they did,” former CIA director John Brennan told MSNBC. If American presidents have always taken the habit of staying, during their days off, in their personal residences, the configuration of Donald Trump’s residence in the heart of a private club has deeply irritated the security service of the House -White throughout his term.
The threat of infiltration had been mentioned as soon as the real estate mogul took office in 2017, particularly in the columns of Politico. “The president is the biggest and richest intelligence target in the world, and there’s almost no limit to the energy and money an adversary will expend to get at him,” David Kris said. , former Obama-era assistant attorney general for national security. The article described an access control without identity verification, the club not even asking guests to declare their names at certain entry points. “It is possible to send a source there to attend and report on the atmosphere, the buzz, the participants, the rumors, etc.”, noted Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA and the National Security Agency.
At the same time, the list of club guests appeared on the Internet. With a few clicks on a search engine, it was possible to identify potential sources, capable of approaching, without effort, the first character of the United States. “Hostile intelligence would like to plant bugs in a place like this,” confirmed John McLaughlin, former acting director of the CIA.
The lack of precaution taken by Donald Trump has allowed foreign intelligence services to collect invaluable information, in particular on the routine of the personnel. Breakfast time, names of servers, route taken to the gym… all the habits of the president’s aides have been scrutinized from Florida. A valuable overview of the functioning of the American presidential machine.
