Elliott Broidy already had a record when he became a major fund-raiser for the Trump campaign in 2016. Now he has become the latest Trump ally to face criminal charges, this time accused of evading foreign lobbying laws while trying to make money off his access to the administration.
Broidy was charged with a single count of conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act as part of an influence operation that prosecutors say sought to use his political ties to help Malaysian and Chinese interests, according to federal court filings that became public on Thursday, reports NYT.
The case centers on an accusation that Mr. Broidy accepted $6 million from a foreign client to lobby administration officials to end a federal investigation related to the looting of the 1Malaysia Development Berhad fund, known as 1MDB. The court filing also accuses Mr. Broidy of seeking the extradition of a Chinese citizen from the United States.
He did not succeed in either effort, and at one point sought to deceive his client about having raised the 1MDB case directly with President Trump, the court filing said.
While the foreign client was not identified, people familiar with the case said he was the Malaysian financier Jho Low, who federal authorities say played a key role in the theft of billions of dollars from 1MDB.
Broidy, 63, is expected to enter a guilty plea to the charge, which was filed last week by prosecutors from the Justice Department’s Public Integrity section and its election crimes branch and unsealed this week.
Broidy’s representatives declined to comment. The charge against him was detailed in a criminal information, which is often filed in cases in which a guilty plea has been agreed to.
The details of the accusations against Mr. Broidy are especially striking: They include a promised $75 million success fee from Mr. Low and discussions about arranging for Malaysia’s prime minister to play golf with Mr. Trump. But they follow a pattern that has become familiar since Mr. Trump began seeking the White House.
People who had backgrounds or were pursuing business that was likely to have raised red flags in other campaigns and administrations marketed themselves as intermediaries to individuals, companies and countries wanting something from the Trump administration. They were able to do so because Mr. Trump ran for office and came to Washington without the established networks of gatekeepers, lobbyists and fund-raisers that typically surround a president.
A number of Mr. Trump’s associates have been charged in the nearly four years since he was elected. Among those who have pleaded or were found guilty of charges related to their work for him are Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser whose case the Justice Department is now seeking to dismiss; George Papadopoulos, a former campaign adviser; and Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime friend whose sentence the president commuted.
Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and his deputy, Rick Gates, were charged with lobbying and financial crimes that predated their work for the president’s campaign. The two pleaded guilty to lesser charges in exchange for agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors, as did Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s longtime personal lawyer.
Mr. Cohen, Mr. Gates and Mr. Manafort had sought to parlay their perceived access to the president into business opportunities.
But few figures seized on the Trump presidency more ambitiously than Mr. Broidy, who owns a defense contracting firm.
He had been a top Republican fund-raiser for years, but he had retreated from politics after pleading guilty in 2009 to a felony charge, later reduced to a misdemeanor, in an unrelated pension fund bribery case.
After Mr. Trump emerged as the Republican presidential nominee in 2016, Mr. Broidy threw his support behind him at a time when most elite Republican donors were staying away.
And when Mr. Trump was elected, Mr. Broidy became a leading fund-raiser for his inauguration and the Republican National Committee, as well as a member of Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private resort in Florida.
