Former casino magnate Steve Wynn scored a much-welcome legal victory June 14 when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out a foreign-agent case brought by the Department of Justice (DoJ) against Wynn.
The DoJ’s suit, first filed in May 2022, attempted to invoke the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which requires certain disclosures for individuals deemed to be acting on behalf of foreign interests to sway domestic policy.
FARA cases are extremely rare, and Wynn’s civil suit was reportedly the first in decades.
Federal authorities argued that Wynn was lobbying for Chinese interests when he urged then-President Donald Trump and other officials in 2017 to cancel the visa of Guo Wengui, a Chinese businessman who had been seeking asylum in the U.S.
Neither the original dismissal in late 2022 nor the appeals court’s affirmation of the dismissal centered around whether Wynn did or did not act as a foreign agent; rather, they simply ruled that he could not be forced to register under FARA given that the lobbying stopped long before the suit was filed.
“Even accepting the government’s allegations as true, Wynn long ago ceased acting as a foreign agent, he has no present obligation to register,” the three-judge panel wrote in their decision.
One of Wynn’s attorneys, Bob Luskin, told The Hill that the ruling was “a well-deserved finish to a long ordeal for our client.”
The 82-year-old Wynn has lived a reclusive life in Florida since 2018 when he stepped down from his namesake company Wynn Resorts and sold his entire 12 percent stake in response to damaging sexual assault allegations first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Wynn Resorts was fined more than $50 million by the Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC) and the Massachusetts Gaming Commission for Wynn’s conduct. Wynn himself settled a formal complaint with the NGC for an additional $10 million last year, and agreed to never return to the Nevada gaming industry.
He also faced a high-profile suit filed by multiple female Wynn employees that was settled last year for an undisclosed amount. He has vehemently denied all allegations since they first surfaced.
