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Friday, October 09, 2020

Elliott Broidy Served By The Feds!

Elliott Broidy may sing like a canary.
Elliot Broidy, a prominent fundraiser for Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party is served by the feds. He is one of three men announced in federal court by disgraced lawyer and former Trump fixer Michael Cohen.

Broidy is being served by the feds for running an illicit lobbying campaign aimed at getting the Trump administration to drop an investigation into the multibillion-dollar looting of a Malaysian state investment fund.

The U.S. Justice Department has dropped the hammer on the latest Trump affiliate. Broidy is accused of participating in a covert lobbying effort, which sought to arrange for the return of a Chinese dissident living the the U.S.

A consultant, Nicki Lum Davis, pleaded guilty in August for her role in the scheme.

The case was filed this week in federal court in Washington, D.C., with Broidy facing a single conspiracy charge related to his failure to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires people lobbying in the U.S. on behalf of a foreign entity to disclose that work to the Justice Department.

A lawyer for Broidy declined to comment on Thursday. The allegations are contained in a charging document known as an information, which typically signals a defendant’s intent to plead guilty.

Prosecutors allege that Broidy worked with Davis and others to get the Justice Department to abandon its pursuit of billions of dollars that officials say were pilfered from 1MDB, a Malaysian wealth fund that was established more than a decade ago to accelerate the country’s economic development but that prosecutors say was actually treated as a piggy bank by associates of former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.

As part of the scheme, prosecutors said, Broidy “facilitated and attempted to facilitate meetings and other efforts to influence officials at the highest level of the United States government, including the President and the Attorney General.” During a May 2017 meeting in a Bangkok hotel suite, he agreed to lobby the Trump administration and the attorney general, then Jeff Sessions, for an $8 million retainer fee, according to prosecutors.

The effort was done on behalf of a fugitive Malaysian financier, Jho Low, but was ultimately unsuccessful: The Justice Department in 2018 charged Low, who remains at large, in connection with conspiring to launder billions of dollars from the fund and last year reached a civil settlement to recover more than $700 million in assets that officials said were traceable to the looted fund.

Low has denied wrongdoing and did not admit blame in that settlement. And Broidy did not register with the U.S. government that he was working on behalf of Low.

Broidy has been a top fundraiser for Trump but resigned in 2018 from his role as deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee after it was revealed that he paid $1.6 million to a Playboy Playmate with whom he had an extramarital affair.

According to prosecutors, Broidy used his access to the White House to try to arrange a golf meeting between Trump and the Malaysian prime minister, and though that outing did not take place, the leaders did ultimately meet at the White House in September 2017. Broidy himself met with Trump at the White House the following month, and though he did not raise the 1MDB matter with him, he told Davis that he had, court papers say.

Broidy’s work also included a separate unsuccessful lobbying effort — trying to arrange for the removal of a Chinese dissident who was living in the U.S. on a temporary visa. The dissident is not referred to by name by prosecutors, but it matches the description of Guo Wengui.

Guo left China in 2014 during an anti-corruption crackdown led by President Xi Jinping that ensnared people close to Guo, including a top intelligence official. Chinese authorities have accused Guo of rape, kidnapping, bribery and other offenses and have sought the return of the self-exiled tycoon.

Cohen who is serving the remainder of his federal time out in the in-house program, revealed that Trump, Broidy and Sean "Softball" Hannity were his clients. Softball Hannity denies he had been a client of Cohen.

Broidy allegedly paid Cohen to conceal an affair with an ex-Playboy model who impregnated and forced a termination on.

Softball Hannity had allegedly been cheating on his then wife Jill Rhodes. He had numerous affairs with Ainsley Earhardt and Sara A Carter. It was revealed that Softball Hannity had been estranged from his wife for over two years before he formally divorced her.

The suspect is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.



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