On July 4, 2020, Guo Wengui stood next to Steve Bannon on a bobbing boat in New York Harbor, with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop, to announce the launch of the “New Federal State of China.”

Guo—a supposed billionaire Chinese dissident who claimed to know secrets of corruption among China’s leaders—had amassed a large, ardent following among that country’s diaspora.

“This case destroyed everything I had—my family’s savings, our ability to support each other, and even our emotional connection.”

The new organization was wildly ambitious. Guo and Bannon called it a “government-in-waiting,” prepared to step in and run China following what they claimed was the imminent collapse of ruling Chinese Communist Party, or CCP. At the same time, Guo was also seeking investments in GTV, an online streaming site he claimed would compete with companies like Amazon and TikTok, make investors rich, and air reporting that would fulfill his oft-stated goal: “Take down CCP.”

On the boat, Guo joined Bannon in reading a declaration of principles, told the former Donald Trump aide he loved him, and kissed him. Then Guo bit his own index finger and signed the declaration with his blood.

That was, in retrospect, one of many signs of how weird 2020 got. But it was also a high point for the “whistleblower movement” Guo and Bannon touted. Nearly six years later, federal prosecutors are asking Judge Analisa Torres, at a hearing Monday, to sentence Guo to more than 30 years in prison for overseeing one of “this nation’s worst and most rampant frauds.”

In 2024, a jury convicted Guo of stealing hundreds of millions from his followers. The New Federal State of China, the harbor ceremony, the nonprofits, and the media companies were all part of an elaborate con Guo used to “lock in” those supporters before hitting them up for investments, prosecutors said a sentencing memo last week.

Guo, who has been jailed as a perceived flight risk since his March 2023 arrest, continues to deny guilt. His lawyers argue, in their own sentencing memo, that his conviction was the result of the Chinese government’s “relentless and overwhelmingly powerful targeting of him.” The memo also suggests, without evidence, that Guo’s support for Trump, in particular his role in the publication of explicit pictures of Hunter Biden prior to the 2020 election, contributed to his prosecution.

“My family and I were defrauded of around $500,000.”

Guo has created a fashion line, secretly funded a pro-Trump........

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