Washington Free Beacon senior editor Bill Gertz hosted a press conference with Chinese dissident Guo Wengui on Thursday at Washington's National Press Club.
Gertz has reported extensively on Guo, a billionaire real estate investor who has claimed to have information about corruption at some of the highest levels of Chinese government and detailed Chinese spying tactics.
Since fleeing China in 2015, he has been the subject of an extensive Chinese government campaign to silence and intimidate him, including freezing some of his assets and urging the U.S. government to silence and repatriate him. Earlier this year, China asked Interpol to issue an international arrest warrant for him.
In his remarks Thursday, Guo said through an interpreter that a small group of corrupt "kleptocrats" currently run China and warned of Chinese spies being recently dispatched to the U.S., CNBC reported.
"They are just a tiny group of Mafia, pure and simple," said Guo, also known as Miles Kwok, who lives in a $68 million apartment in New York City. "I would like all the members of the Chinese Communist Party to wake up and say no to this ruling clique."
Guo said he was aware of multiple initiatives by that clique in China to increase the number of spies in the U.S. and "to weaken the United States, to bring about turmoil in the United States and to ... decimate the United States."
"These plans pose great threats to the American people and their property," Guo said.