How a Mar-a-Lago member helped set up the Brazil summit that exposed Trump to coronavirus
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A hastily announced international summit that brought Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro — and at least one case of the coronavirus — to President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort on Saturday was set in motion thanks to a letter written by a Brazilian financier and hand-delivered to the president by a longtime Mar-a-Lago member and Trump business associate, according to sources familiar with the meeting.
“President Bolsonaro has a deep appreciation for the United States and its democratic values, and personally holds you and the First Family in great esteem,” Mário Garnero, an 82-year old Brazilian entrepreneur, wrote in an undated letter addressed to Trump. “It is therefore a most opportune time to respectfully request on behalf of President Bolsonaro an informal visit with you at your ‘Southern White House’ in Mar-A-Lago. ”
Thanks to a mutual friend, Garnero was able to pass the letter on to Richard Bernstein, a Mar-a-Lago member who runs a West Palm Beach insurance agency, Richard S. Bernstein & Associates, that has sold coverage to the Trump Organization. Bernstein then hand-delivered the letter to Trump at Mar-a-Lago over Presidents’ Day weekend in mid-February, according to Garnero and his son Alvaro Garnero, both of whom attended the summit, as well as two other sources familiar with the sequence of events. Trump announced the summit just a day before it was set to take place.
The White House referred questions about whether the summit was planned outside of normal diplomatic channels to the State Department. A spokesperson for State referred those same questions back to the White House. Brazil’s Foreign Affairs Ministry declined to comment.
Typically, meetings between heads of state involve weeks if not months of planning and diplomatic back-and-forth.
The backstory of the Bolsonaro summit reveals the crucial role Mar-a-Lago and its members play in the Trump Administration and the extent to which the president relies on an international circle of wealthy supporters who helped propel him to the White House.
Bernstein and his wife, Robin, are prominent members of Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private club and residence in Palm Beach. Robin Bernstein is a prolific Trump fundraiser and was named ambassador to the Dominican Republic in 2017, despite speaking only basic Spanish.
Garnero said he was having drinks in South Florida about a month ago when he had a “moment of inspiration,” he told the Miami Herald in a recent interview. (At the time, the coronavirus felt like far less of a threat in the Western Hemisphere.)
Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far-right president, had just announced his plan to visit Miami’s Brazilian community in March. To Garnero, who founded an investment bank in the 1970s and reportedly had close ties with the country’s then-military dictatorship, that smelled like an opportunity.
“So I said: ‘If President Bolsonaro is coming to Miami next month, why not pay a visit to President Trump at his beach house?’ ” Garnero recounted.
The Bolsonaro meeting, which took place over dinner at Mar-a-Lago and coincided with a birthday party held for former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, seemed to come out of the blue. Even President Trump, who initially told reporters it would take place Friday rather than Saturday, seemed hazy on the details.
“If we had gone through official channels, the meeting probably wouldn’t have happened,” Garnero said.
As a result of the unconventional diplomatic meeting, Trump and Vice President Mike Pence were exposed to someone carrying the coronavirus. On Thursday, the Bolsonaro’s office confirmed that Fabio Wajngarten, his press secretary, tested positive for COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus.
Wajngarten had earlier posted on Instagram a picture of him standing close to Trump and Pence at Mar-a-Lago. Also in the photograph is Alvaro Garnero. The men are displaying brown “Make Brazil Great Again” hats.
After the revelation that his press aide had tested positive, Bolsonaro announced via a Facebook video that he was being tested for the coronavirus. He wore a mask in the video.
On Friday, Bolsonaro posted on Facebook that his test result was negative — contradicting earlier reports that he had tested positive.
Separately, a second unidentified person who visited Mar-a-Lago over the weekend tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the Washington Post. An official with the Republican National Committee told the Miami Herald/McClatchy that person did not interact with the president or the first family.
Some other U.S. politicians who attended the gathering, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, and Sen. Rick Scott, R-Florida, both staunch Trump supporters, announced they would self-quarantine.
Trump himself said Thursday he was “not concerned” about the coronavirus incident. The White House has said Trump does not need to be tested.
His daughter, Ivanka Trump, also recently met with an Australian official who tested positive for the coronavirus, the New York Times reported Friday.
Richard Bernstein declined to comment to the Herald about how the summit was arranged. But he said he was glad the two leaders were able to meet and discuss top-level issues, including international trade and the upheaval in Venezuela, where both men hope to see President Nicolás Maduro toppled.
One pre-dinner conversation between Trump and Bolsonaro was caught on video and posted to social media. Trump is shown describing his decision not to impose tariffs on Brazilian metals as a “great gift” to his foreign counterpart, whom he called a “great friend.”
“I gave him a great gift — I gave him a good gift. We didn’t charge him tariffs on something and that made him much more popular,” Trump told a group that included Bolsonaro, Pence and Ivanka Trump, according to Instagram videos obtained by the Herald. (Speaking to reporters that same evening, Trump said he would make no promises about whether tariffs could be imposed on Brazil in the future.)
At Mar-a-Lago, diplomacy is a spectator sport, one available for the whole world to see on social media — if you know where to look.
Club guests recorded the president’s interactions with Bolsonaro on their phones, despite Mar-a-Lago banning photographs and videos.
The Trump administration has been criticized for handling high-level diplomatic meetings that past administrations might have held in more formal and secure settings. Previously, Trump has hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago, as well as a gathering of leaders from Caribbean nations. He was criticized for openly discussing a North Korean missile launch at a dinner with Abe on the club’s terrace with dozens of club goers in close proximity. A photo posted by one club guest showed a Trump aide toting what many noted appeared to be the “nuclear football.”
‘It was spectacular’
The meeting between Trump and Bolsonaro appeared to go well at the time, at least before the coronavirus exposure was revealed days later.
“In the end, it was spectacular,” said Alvaro Garnero. “Trump was incredibly welcoming. They talked for almost three hours, it was fantastic. You know how Bolsonaro is a bit shy and wants to sit down, eat and leave, right? Well, at Mar-a-Lago he seemed to be very comfortable. The two talked for a long time about important issues.”
Bolsonaro shares anti-immigrant and protectionist tendencies with Trump. A former military officer, Bolsonaro once told a Brazilian congresswoman that “I would never rape you because you do not deserve it.” He has also made controversial statements about the LGBTQ community and indigenous and minority groups, and defended Brazil’s repressive military dictatorship, which ruled the country from 1964 to 1985.
Mário Garnero also had ties to the regime. Media reports from the 1980s describe him as a “personal friend” of Brazil’s last military leader, President João Baptista Figueiredo, an army general and head of the national intelligence service whose term as president ended in 1985.
In the 1970s, Garnero founded Brasilinvest, an investment bank that financed massive real estate and telecommunications projects at a time when the military government was borrowing heavily on international markets and investing in infrastructure to support Brazil’s so-called “economic miracle.”
The bank was liquidated in 1985 after the regime fell and Garnero was accused of securities fraud and of siphoning off funds to companies he owned outside of Brazil. An arrest warrant was issued but Garnero was not jailed. He relaunched the bank in 1990 and invested in everything from oil to computer equipment and shopping malls, often in multimillion-dollar partnerships with foreign investors.
He describes himself as a connector of people who for decades has been selling Brazil to political and business leaders from all over the world. A glance at his profile on the bank’s website provides some evidence: Garnero shaking hands with then-Pope Benedict, chatting with George H.W. Bush, laughing with Bill Clinton and meeting with several Brazilian leaders. He has said that he considered Sen. Robert Kennedy, President Ronald Reagan and Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, personal friends.
A Mar-a-Lago meet-and-greet
The summit bore all the trappings of a typical get-together at Mar-a-Lago.
Several people wandered between the dining area where the meeting happened and a 51st birthday party held for Guilfoyle, who is dating Donald Trump Jr. and is national chairwoman of Trump Victory, the president’s reelection fundraising committee.
Trump associates such as Rudy Giuliani and former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik, the latter recently pardoned by the president for tax fraud, showed up for a moment in the limelight. In a nearby ballroom, a who’s who of Trump’s inner circle celebrated Guilfoyle’s birthday as guests danced to Juvenile’s “Back that Ass Up” and “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus.
The opportunity to fête the president’s family while also meeting the leader of the Americas’ second-largest economy is one of the reasons business has boomed at Mar-a-Lago since Trump’s election.
“What other business can advertise that? It’s priceless,” said Robert Maguire, research director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit government watchdog that has repeatedly sued the administration over transparency and other issues.
The crowd at Guilfoyle’s party, in addition to Trump Jr. and the president’s extended family, included acting director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus, Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative youth group Turning Point USA.
Trump and Bolsonaro stopped by the party and addressed the revelers.
“He’s constantly out-negotiating the United States and that’s OK because he is my friend,” Trump said of Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro noted what an honor it was to be at the club as a friend of the U.S. government.
“We are also sweeping the left from Brazil,” Bolsonaro said. “And that’s very good. It’s a country that once again has faith in the future, and above all a country that believes in God.”
Francesca Chambers, McClatchy’s White House correspondent, contributed to this report.
