BEVERLY HILLS—Elliott Broidy, a GOP fundraiser and the former deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee pleaded guilty to a federal charge of acting as an unregistered foreign agent and lobbying the Trump administration on behalf of a Malaysian financier and international fugitive on Tuesday, October 20.
Broidy, 63, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act in a District of Columbia federal court.
He admitted that he agreed to lobby government officials including President Trump and the Attorney General between March 2017 and January 2018 to drop civil forfeiture proceedings concerning the 1MDB fund. The Department of Justice confirmed that Broidy was given $9 million by one of the alleged architects of the 1MDB scheme.
“Broidy worked on behalf of foreign officials to influence the Department of Justice, and in doing so, failed to disclose his lucrative relationship with the foreign officials,” said Keith A. Bonanno, special agent in charge at the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General Cyber Investigations Office in a statement.
Broidy also agreed to lobby the government and Department of Justice, asking to remove and return a Chinese national and dissident of the People’s Republic of China. He hid that he had been paid millions of dollars, but the lobbying failed noted fedederal officials.
As his lobbying acts, Broidy tried to have a meeting for a Chinese government during the visit in May 2017, provided the secretary of state with talking points about the 1MDB investigation before a meeting with the Malaysian Prime Minister in August 2017, and also recommended White House staff members to hold a gold game between the president and the Malaysian prime minister, in order to discuss 1MDB investigation.
“His guilty plea is the first step in vindicating the principle of transparency that undergirds the free flow of ideas in our democratic system,” said Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers of the DOJ’s national security division.
Broidy’s sentence has not been determined.
