Elliott Broidy

Elliott B. Broidy (born July 18, 1957) is an American venture capitalist, Republican fundraiser, and philanthropist. From 2005 to 2008 he was finance chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC). In 2017, he was named a deputy finance chairman of the RNC. Broidy resigned from his RNC role in April 2018 after the Wall Street Journal reported that he had admitted to being a party to a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) between “David Dennison” and Playboy Playmate pornographic model Shera Bechard. When knowledge of Bechard’s NDA broke out to the public, it was hastily stated to the media that “Dennison” referd to Broidy. “Dennison” is stated to have had a sexual affair with Bechard which resulted in a pregnancy that she terminated. “David Dennison”, however, has since been confirmed to be a pseudonym used by Donald Trump in an NDA with Stormy Daniels that Trump long denied knowledge of and which had been drawn up by Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who is now under investigation for bank fraud, wire fraud, and campaign finance violations. While Broidy arranged the payment of $1.6 million which was paid to Bechard, that payment was funneled through Essential Consultants LLC (the same LLC set up by Cohen to make payment to Stormy Daniels, which was reimbursed by Trump), claims have now been made by various legal scholars, legal analysts, lawyers including Michael Avenatti (current attorney for Stormy Daniels), and other legal commentators positing that Broidy might not ultimately be the “David Dennison” in the agreement with Bechard despite his apparent superficial admission.

Broidy is the son of Sherman G. Broidy (1924–2014), an educator and property developer, and Dorothy Horowitz.^[3] Broidy is Jewish.^[4]

Broidy graduated from the University of Southern California, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting and Finance.^[5][6] He is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA).^[5][6]

Broidy started his career in finance at Arthur Andersen. He was managing director at Bell Enterprises from 1982 to 1991.^[6] In 1991, he founded Broidy Capital Management, an investment firm, serving as its chairman and chief executive officer.^[5][6][7]

Broidy served as chairman of ESI Holdings, an event management firm.^[5] He served as commissioner and chairman of the Alternative Investment Committee of the Los Angeles City Fire and Police Pension Fund from 2002 to 2009.^[5][6][8]

In 2002, Broidy founded Markstone Capital, a private equity firm which invested in companies in Israel. The lead investor was the New York State Common Pension Fund.^[5][6][9] The pension fund invested $250 million with Markstone.^[10] Broidy later was accused of giving illegal gifts to pension authorities, several of whom went to prison. In exchange for his testimony against them, Broidy pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and paid $18 million in restitution.^[8]

Broidy was the executive producer of two 2013 films: Sugar and Snake and Mongoose.^[11]

Broidy owns the private security company Circinus, which provides services to the United States and other governments. The company has hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with the United Arab Emirates (UAE).^[12] In 2018, Broidy intended to take a business trip with George Nader to meet with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, in order to sell the prince a $650 million contract with Circinus. The plan fell apart when F.B.I. agents took Nader in for questioning upon his arrival at Dulles Airport.^[13]

Becoming interested in politics after the 9/11 attacks, he joined the Republican Jewish Coalition^[8] and ultimately became a member of the board of directors, a position he still holds.^[14] Between 2002 and 2004 he became a “Super Ranger", donating more than $300,000 to re-election campaign of President George W. Bush.^[15] From 2004 to 2006 he raised campaign funds for many Republican candidates. In late 2005 he was selected to serve as finance chairman for the Republican National Committee (RNC) from 2006–2008.^[16]

In October 2006, he hosted a fundraiser for Bush, where US$1 million was raised.^[17] Later that year, he was appointed by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to the Homeland Security Advisory Council as well as the Terrorism Task Force and New Technology Task Force.^[5][7][8]

In 2016 Broidy served as a vice chairman of the Trump Victory Committee, a joint fundraising committee between the Donald Trump campaign and the RNC.^[18] In addition, he served as a vice chairman of the Presidential Inaugural Committee.^[19] In April 2017 Broidy was named a national deputy finance chairmen of the RNC.^[20]

In October 2017 in a private meeting with U.S. president Donald Trump, Broidy praised a paramilitary force his company Circinus was creating for the UAE. He urged the president to meet with the UAE's military commander Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, to support the UAE's hawkish policies in the Middle East, and to fire U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. He was also harshly critical of Qatar, an American ally at odds with the UAE. Both Bannon and Kushner supported President Trump meeting George Nader, who is a very strong lobbyist for the UAE and Saudi Arabia.^[12][21]

In 2006, Bush appointed him to the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.^[22][7][8]

Broidy served on the board of governors and the endowment committee of Hebrew Union College and the board of trustees of the Hillel Foundation, as well as the Center for Investment Studies at the Marshall School of Business at his alma mater, the University of Southern California.^[5] He served on the board of governors of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the board of trustees of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.^[7][6] He was the 2008 recipient of the Raoul Wallenberg Award by the Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States for his Jewish philanthropy.^[23]

In 2009, Broidy entered a guilty plea to a single felony count of attempting to provide excess gratuity to former New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi. The charge was later reduced to a misdemeanor^[8][23][24] in exchange for cooperation that helped lead to the conviction of Hevesi and six other pension officials.^[10][25] Broidy had provided $1 million in illegal gifts to New York State pension authorities. The gifts included luxury trips to Israel, payouts, and an undisclosed investment in a film produced by the brother of the chief investment officer of the New York State Retirement Fund. In exchange for the gifts, the state pension fund had invested $250 million with Markstone Capital Partners.^[10][26] As part of the plea deal, Broidy paid $18 million in restitution of management fees paid by the pension fund to Markstone.

In March 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported that Broidy had been in negotiations to earn tens of millions of dollars by lobbying the U.S. Justice Department to drop its investigation into a multibillion-dollar graft scandal involving a Malaysian state investment fund, 1MDB, according to emails reviewed by the Journal. One email showed a proposal that would have given Broidy and his wife $75 million if they got the Justice Department to drop its probe into 1MDB. Broidy also prepared talking points for Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to tell Trump during his 2017 visit to Washington, DC. This included playing up Malaysia's relationship with the U.S. in fighting North Korea and arguing against pursuing legal action against 1MDB.^[27][28]

Broidy is under an investigation launched by the Prosecutor General of Ukraine for Broidy's June 12, 2014, deal to provide political support for VTB Bank and Investment Capital Ukraine (ICU), which acts as a financial advisor to President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko.^[29][30] Broidy was to receive five payments of $2.5 million each through the British Virgin Islands firm with a Dubai address, Quillas Equities SA, which has Yuri Soloviev as a large shareholder according to the Panama Papers.^[29][31] Yuri Soloviev is a member of the management board for VTB and is the first deputy president and chairman of its management board.^[29][32] Yuri Soloviev's Quillas Equities has accounts in the Swiss Pictet Bank through which money transfers often occur to the VTB owned bank in Cyprus, RCB Cyprus.^[31]

In March 2018, The New York Times reported that Lebanese-American businessman George Nader "worked for more than a year to turn [Elliott Broidy] into an instrument of influence at the White House for the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to interviews and previously undisclosed documents. ...High on the agenda of the two men...was pushing the White House to remove Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, backing confrontational approaches to Iran and Qatar and repeatedly pressing the president to meet privately outside the White House with the leader of the U.A.E."^[33]

On April 13, 2018, The Wall Street Journal hastily reported that Broidy, who was married at the time, had a sexual relationship with the Playboy Playmate Shera Bechard, resulting in a pregnancy in late 2017.^[34][35] The model later electively terminated the pregnancy. Lawyer Michael Cohen negotiated a deal to pay $1.6 million for the woman's silence. The settlement was falsely characterized at the time as a personal injury settlement.^[36][37] Broidy resigned his post at the RNC the same day the article appeared.^[38]

According to an article by New York Magazine, as Broidy has a history of high-figure bribes to public officials, including convictions for bribery, and being that Broidy himself has no public relations interest to pay off an affair of his own, and he has no previous history with Michael Cohen, it's likely that the agreement was falsely characterized to the media as being for Broidy himself. Rather, the person who really impregnated Bechard was a much higher profile politician with a history of soliciting Playboy models (and building tall buildings) who Broidy, with his payment to Bechard, bribed in a quid pro quo.

During court proceedings in an unrelated criminal matter against Cohen heard in the Southern District of New York (where the judge granted standing to Michael Avenatti for Stormy Daniels’ civil case against Trump), Cohen’s legal representatives were forced to admit under oath that Cohen had only three sole legal clients over more than a decade, including during the timeframe where Cohen drew up the agreement which they initially alleged in the media to have been for Broidy. Those three sole clients disclosed in court by Cohen, however, included Donald Trump, The Trump Organization, and political opinion pundit Sean Hannity, but noticeably did not include Elliott Broidy.

Broidy’s history of bribery includes paying off the mistresses of public officials as a modus operandi. Between 2004 and 2005, Broidy paid over $90,000 to the girlfriend of a high-ranking official of the New York Office of the New York State Comptroller to cover her living expenses, rent, hospital bills, in addition to $5,500 a month to a relative of hers totalling another $44,000 which was concealed through a sham loan agreement between Broidy and her relative.^[39]

Broidy is married to Robin Rosenzweig, a JD, MBA who is a former senior executive of 20th Century Fox.^[7][40] After residing in Holmby Hills, they moved to Bel Air in 2005. The couple have three children: Rachael, Lauren and Nathaniel.^[7]