I’ll be Deng’d: Rupert Murdoch’s ex a Chinese spy?

Chinese-American businesswoman Wendi Deng Murdoch, who was married to media mogul Rupert Murdoch for 14 years before splitting in 2013, may or may not be a Chinese spy, according to a Wall Street Journal report published this week.

Senior White House adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner was allegedly warned earlier this year that the woman that he and his wife, Ivanka Trump, have palled around with for years might, in fact, be using their friendship to “further the interests of the Chinese government,” the Journal reported, citing anonymous sources.

More specifically, officials reportedly worried that Wendi Deng Murdoch would leverage her friendship with the Kushners to lobby for a now-defunct $100 million garden project at the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. That project, by the way, was going to be funded by China.

The arboretum project, which called for the erection of a 70-foot tower, was blocked after officials deemed it a surveillance threat.

Now, to be fair, the sort of warning that the Kushners reportedly received isn’t unusual. In fact, the Journal said it was part of a “routine senior staff security briefing.” Intelligence officials regularly brief White House and congressional officials on possible conflicts of interests posed by relationships with foreign governments or agents.

A spokesman for Murdoch dismissed the Journal story outright, saying in a statement that his client “has no knowledge of any FBI concerns or other intelligence agency concerns relating to her or her associations.” The spokesman also said she was unaware of Chinese government-funded projects involving the National Arboretum.

Exactly what a spy would say!

The Kushners meanwhile said via a spokesperson that they have, “been friends with Rupert and Wendi Murdoch for a decade before coming to Washington and their relationship is neither political nor about China.”

But here’s an interesting (i.e. too funny to be true) wrinkle in the story: New York journalist Michael Wolff suggested this week that the idea that Wendi Deng Murdoch is a Chinese communist spy originates with her ex-husband.

“Since their divorce, Murdoch has been telling anybody who would listen that Wendi is a Chinese spy — and had been throughout the marriage,” Wolff wrote in a tweet.

I’m just going to throw this out there: Rupert Murdoch serves as the current executive chairman of News Corp., which owns the Wall Street Journal.

Let’s ask which is more likely: That Wendi Deng Murdoch is a deeply embedded, Manchurian Candidate-style spy, or that this entire episode stems from a stupid rumor started by a jilted ex-husband.

Honestly, we can’t decide. On the one hand, the spy storyline is just so far-fetched. But on the other hand is Michael Wolff, whose word is to be taken with all the grains of salt.