Beverly Hills GOP Donor Pardoned By Trump

Beverly Hills CA

20 January, 2021

4:31 PM

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BEVERLY HILLS, CA — Former Republican National Committee Deputy Finance Chairman Elliott Broidy was among 73 people pardoned by President Donald Trump hours before his term expires Wednesday. The Beverly Hills resident pleaded guilty Oct. 20 to a federal charge of acting as an unregistered foreign agent and lobbying the Trump administration on behalf of a Malaysian financier who is now an international fugitive. Emails showed that Broidy was offered $75 million to get the Justice Department to drop its investigation into the scandal. Broidy pleaded guilty in a District of Columbia federal court to conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, according to the Department of Justice. The DOJ said Broidy conspired with others to influence the Trump administration on behalf of wanted Malaysian financier Jho Low. Broidy admitted to accepting millions to lobby the Justice Department to stop efforts to seize Low's assets, and admitted to pushing for the extradition of Guo Wengui, a billionaire Steve Bannon ally. "In exchange for millions of dollars, Elliott Broidy and his co- conspirators agreed to secretly do the bidding of a foreign government and a foreign national by lobbying senior U.S. government officials regarding a pending DOJ investigation and the extradition of a foreign national," said acting Assistant Attorney General Brian C. Rabbitt of the DOJ's criminal division. "Although his repeated efforts to influence the administration were unsuccessful, Mr. Broidy never disclosed that he was actually acting on behalf of foreign actors. "This case demonstrates how foreign governments and principals seek to advance their agendas in the United States by hiding behind politically influential proxies. Such conduct poses a serious threat to our national security and undermines the integrity of our democracy. "Mr. Broidy's failure to disclose that he was acting on behalf of foreign principals deceived the American people and prevented government officials from properly evaluating the true source of and motivation for his lobbying efforts." According to admissions made in connection with his plea, between March 2017 and January 2018, Broidy agreed to lobby Trump, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and other high-level officials in the Trump administration and Department of Justice to drop civil forfeiture proceedings and related matters concerning the embezzlement of billions of dollars from 1Malaysia Development Berhad, a strategic investment and development company owned by the Malaysian government. For his efforts, Broidy was paid $9 million by an unnamed foreign national, an alleged architect of the so-called 1MDB scheme, federal prosecutors said. Broidy also agreed to lobby the administration and DOJ on behalf of the foreign national and a People's Republic of China minister, to arrange for the removal and return of a dissident of the PRC living in the United States. Broidy concealed from the officials whom he lobbied that he was being paid millions of dollars by the foreign national with the expectation of tens of millions more in success fees. The lobbying campaigns were ultimately unsuccessful. Broidy "sought to lobby the highest levels of the U.S. government to drop one of the largest fraud and money-laundering prosecutions ever brought and to deport a critic of the Chinese Communist Party, all the while concealing the foreign interests whose bidding he was doing," said Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers of the DOJ's national security division. Broidy resigned from his position at the RNC in 2018 after he was revealed to have paid $1.6 million to former Playboy model Shera Bechard in exchange for silence about an extramarital affair, according to an Axios report. The payment was facilitated by Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen. In a statement issued early Wednesday Washington time by the Office of the Press Secretary, the pardon for Broidy was supported by Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, two other House members, two generals and four rabbis, including Rabbi Pini Dunner of Young Israel of North Beverly Hills, Rabbi Steven Leder of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Koreatown, and Rabbi Meyer May, the executive director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The statement said Broidy is well-known for his numerous philanthropic efforts, including on behalf of law enforcement, the military and veterans programs, and the Jewish community. Trump also pardoned Steve Bannon, Lil Wayne, rapper Kodak Black, and dozens of others. He pardoned five other people California ties: Dr. Faustino Bernadett, the former owner of Long Beach Pacific Hospital sentenced to 15 months in federal prison for taking part in a health care fraud scheme; Randall "Duke" Cunningham, a former San Diego Republican congressman sentenced in 2006 to eight years and four months in prison for reportedly accepting $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors; Robert Zangrillo, a Miami-based real estate developer who took part in the USC college admissions scandal; Anthony Levandowski, a former Google and Uber engineer sentenced to eight months in prison after pleading guilty to stealing trade secrets from Google about driverless cars; and Greg Reyes, the former CEO of Brocade Communications in San Jose, who was convicted for fraudulent backdating of corporate stock options. — City News Service and Patch staffer Michael Wittner contributed to this report