152 VANITY FAIR NOVEMBER 2019
top intelligence agency. The speaker’s press
o cer, Ashley Etienne, pointed me to news
reports about Yang “bypassing security” at
Mar-a-Lago. “This was before it broke that
she’s a likely spy,” Etienne added.
Etienne appeared to have misidentied
Yang. I asked her if she was referring to a
separate probe involving a Chinese woman
named Yujing Zhang, who had allegedly
breached Mar-a-Lago security. “I am not
sure what you mean,” Etienne wrote back,
referring me to the FBI for “more details.”
I also emailed Senator Dianne Feinstein,
who had signed the letter requesting an
investigation. Her press person also respond-
ed by citing the case against Zhang.
“This is political prosecution with no
evidence,” Cliff Yi, executive director of
the National Committee of Asian American
Republicans, told me. “It reminds us of our
experience in China. It reminds us of how
we were scared, how we were oppressed.”
On September 11, Zhang was convicted
of trespassing and lying to federal agents.
The FBI has also opened a public corruption
investigation into Yang, focusing on whether
she illegally funneled money from China
into Trump’s reelection campaign. Federal
prosecutors sent subpoenas to Mar-a-Lago,
demanding that it turn over all records relat-
ing to Yang. . Kraft, aided by the best defense team mon-
ey can buy, seems likely to beat the charges
against him. Last May, a judge threw out
the video evidence that had been gathered
at Orchids, ruling that the warrant had been
“seriously awed.” The judge also threw out
evidence from Kraft’s tra c stop, calling it
“the fruit of an unlawful search.” The state
is appealing the ruling.
Even if he is found guilty, however, Kraft
has little to fear in the way of punishment.
In Florida, as in most other states, the pur-
chasing of sex is a misdemeanor. The few
rst-time johns who wind up being convicted
typically pay a ne and perform no more than
100 hours of community service. The selling
of sex, however, is policed far more severely.
Sex workers are more likely than johns to face
repeated arrest, increasing the odds that they
will be charged with a felony and sentenced
to prison, and have fewer resources to defendthemselves in court. And “madams” who
prot from the prostitution of others—the
charge leveled against Mandy and Lulu—
can be convicted of money laundering if the
proceeds are deposited in a bank, or used to
pay rent, or buy milk.
While Kraft’s legal team ights to have
the charges against him dismissed, one of
the alleged sex workers arrested in the raids,
Lei Chen, remains in ICE custody. Under
civil forfeiture proceedings, the state seized
her J.P. Morgan Chase account, which held
$2,900. Until August 21, when she was trans-
ferred to another immigration facility, Chen
was held at the detention center in West Palm
Beach, a half mile from a strip club where
Stormy Daniels performed, and across from
the Trump International Golf Club.
Another alleged sex worker, Yaping Ren,
was also held for ve months, waiting to be
handed over to ICE, before being released
in July. Her status remains uncertain: Her
attorney told me that he has been unable to
determine whether she is going to be deport-
ed. The county has only two court-certied
Mandarin interpreters, who charge $400 an
hour—a prohibitively high fee for his clients.
Under Florida law, it would appear, happy
endings are the exclusive property of men.Ike Perlmutter,
Marvel’s CEO and controlling shareholder,
and vouch for me.
Later, after we’d closed the deal, Ike told
me that he’d still had his doubts and the call
from Steve made a big di£erence. “He said you
were true to your word,” Ike said. I was grateful
that Steve was willing to do it as a friend, really,
more than as the most inuential member of
our board. Every once in a while, I would say to
him, “I have to ask you this, you’re our largest
shareholder,” and he would always respond,
“You can’t think of me as that. That’s insulting.
I’m just a good friend.”
With every success the company has had
since Steve’s death, there’s always a moment
in the midst of my excitement when I think, I
wish Steve could be here for this. It’s impos-
sible not to have the conversation with him
in my head that I wish I could be having in
real life. More than that, I believe that if Steve
were still alive, we would have combined our
companies, or at least discussed the possibil-
ity very seriously.
In the summer of 2011, Steve and Laurene
came to our house in L.A. to have dinner with
Willow and me. He was in the late stages of
cancer by then, terribly thin and in obvious
pain. He had very little energy, and his voice
was a low rasp. But he wanted to spend an
evening with us, in part to toast what we’d
done years ago. We sat in our dining room
and raised glasses of wine before dinner.
“Look what we did,” he said. “We saved two
companies.”
All four of us teared up. This was Steve
at his warmest and most sincere. He was
convinced that Pixar had ourished in ways
that it never would have had it not become
part of Disney, and that Disney had been
reenergized by bringing on Pixar. I couldn’t
help but think of those early conversations
and how nervous I was to reach out to him. It
was only six years before, but it seemed like
another lifetime. He’d become so important
to me, professionally and personally. As we
toasted, I could barely look at Willow. She
had known Steve much longer than I had,
going way back to 1982, when he was one of
the young, brash, brilliant founders of Apple.
Now he was gaunt and frail and in the last
months of his life, and I knew how much it
pained her to see him that way.
He died on October 5, 2011. There were
about 25 people at his burial in Palo Alto. Wegathered in a tight square around his co n,
and Laurene asked if anyone wanted to say
anything. I hadn’t prepared to speak, but the
memory of that walk we took on Pixar’s cam-
pus years earlier came to mind.
I’d never told anyone other than Alan
Braverman, our general counsel, and Wil-
low, because I needed to share the emotional
intensity of that day. I thought the moment
captured Steve’s character, though, so I
recalled it there at the cemetery: Steve pull-
ing me aside; the walk across campus; the
way he put his arm around me and delivered
the news; his concern that I should have this
intimate, terrible knowledge, because it
might a£ect me and Disney and he wanted to
be fully transparent; the emotion with which
he talked about his son and his need to live
long enough to see him graduate from high
school and begin his life as an adult.
After the funeral, Laurene came up to me
and said, “I’ve never told my side of that sto-
ry.” She described Steve coming home that
night. “We had dinner, and then the kids left
the dinner table, and I said to Steve, ‘So, did
you tell him?’ ‘I told him.’ And I said, ‘Can
we trust him?’ ” We were standing there with
Steve’s grave behind us, and Laurene, who’d
just buried her husband, gave me a gift that
I’ve thought about nearly every day since.
I’ve certainly thought of Steve every day. “I
asked him if we could trust you,” Laurene
said. “And Steve said, ‘I love that guy.’ ” The
feeling was mutual.Disney Deal
CONTINUED FROM PAGE
Robert Kraft