WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. _ Cindy Yang, the former owner of the Jupiter day spa at the center of a prostitution sting, emerged as a central figure of media reports about potential Chinese influence in Republican circles.
Now she's suing the newspaper that broke the story that thrust her into the national spotlight.
The Miami Herald revealed that Yang founded and later sold the Orchids of Asia Day Spa where New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is accused of soliciting prostitution. The newspaper also published Yang's now-viral selfie with President Donald Trump at his Super Bowl watch party near West Palm Beach.
Yang's complaint, filed Tuesday in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, claims the March 8 article included a "series of untrue statements and misrepresentations."
The Herald's story led to a number of others, including articles in The Palm Beach Post, about how Yang belonged to a group tied to Chinese Communist Party while she sought access to Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort and top Republicans.
Included in the complaint is a March letter from Herald attorney Sanford Bohrer, of Miami-based Holland & Knight, that disputes claims of factual errors in the story. The Herald hasn't published any corrections to the article.
In a separate April 10 letter to Yang's attorney, Bohrer raised the specter that the Trump family and his associates could be summoned as witnesses if Yang proceeded with the defamation suit.
Bohrer cautioned that the lawsuit "will be quite expensive" and "there will be many witnesses, including the Trump family and associates."
Bohrer also warned Yang's attorney that the Wellington woman might be saddled with the Herald's attorney fees under Florida's anti-SLAPP law, which protects people from suits aimed at intimidating defendants into settling to avoid legal costs.
Yang's attorney Evan Turk called Yang a "casualty in a much larger political game" in a statement to The Post Wednesday.
"Our law firm views the threats to involve the Trump family and associates as an elementary bullying tactic," Turk wrote. "Our experience has proven time and again that bullying is for people who have no confidence in their actions."
Herald Managing Editor Rick Hirsch stood by newspaper's reporting in a statement Wednesday.
"We will defend this case vigorously," he wrote. "We stand behind our stories, which accurately reflect publicly available documents and investigations of spas run by Cindy Yang. The stories described in the lawsuit don't accurately reflect what we published."
The Herald reported that Yang sold the Jupiter massage parlor years before the Kraft arrest, though her family still owned other spas in Palm Beach and Broward counties.
Yang's lawsuit claims the Herald inaccurately described Yang as the owner of a day spa where a woman reported signs of prostitution to law enforcement in 2016. The Herald did not name the spa or the police agency to protect the anonymity of a worker quoted in the article.
Yang's lawsuit paints the Herald's reporting as an attack on the president, calling the piece "fake news propaganda."
"The article reads as if it is the playbook for the anti-President Trump manifesto," the complaint reads.
The article forced Yang to move, give up a voluntary role with the Republican Executive Committee and undergo psychiatric treatment, the complaint states.
Said Karyn Turk, Evan Turk's wife and spokeswoman for his law firm, Palm Beach Law Offices: "It has taken a serious toll on her mental well-being and has impacted her life in a profoundly negative way."
