Elliott Broidy: Bribery, 1MDB Plea, and Trump Pardon

Elliott Broidy is a Los Angeles-based Republican fundraiser and private equity executive who pleaded guilty in two separate corruption cases — a New York state pension bribery scheme in 2009 and a federal foreign lobbying conspiracy in 2020 — and received a presidential pardon from Donald Trump on Trump’s last day in office in January 2021.¹ A former deputy national finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, Broidy today runs Broidy Capital Holdings and LEO Technologies, an AI-powered prison surveillance company that won a $106 million federal contract from the Department of Justice in April 2026.²

The New York Pension Bribery Case

Broidy’s first conviction came on December 3, 2009, when he pleaded guilty in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan to a felony count of rewarding official misconduct.³ He admitted paying nearly $1 million in bribes to officials in the office of former New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi to steer a $250 million investment from the New York State Common Retirement Fund into his private equity firm, Markstone Capital Partners.⁴

The payments were layered. Prosecutors described a $75,000 luxury vacation for a senior pension official, $90,000 in living expenses for another official’s girlfriend, $44,000 to a relative, a $380,000 fake consulting contract to another relative, and a $300,000 investment in a film called “Chooch” produced by the brother of the pension fund’s former chief financial officer. The gifts were funneled through charities using false receipts.⁴⁵

Under his plea deal, Broidy forfeited $18 million in management fees collected from the pension fund, resigned from Markstone, and cooperated with the New York attorney general’s investigation. He faced up to four years in prison, but after his cooperation the felony was eventually reduced to a misdemeanor.⁵⁶ In 2014 he paid a separate $1 million settlement to the New Mexico State Investment Council to resolve pay-to-play claims in that state.⁷

Rebuilding as a Republican Fundraiser

Despite his conviction, Broidy returned to Republican politics as a major donor and bundler. He served as a top fundraiser for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the 2017 inauguration, and sits on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition.⁷ In 2017 the Republican National Committee named him deputy national finance chairman.²

The Shera Bechard Payment and RNC Resignation

Broidy resigned from the RNC on April 13, 2018, the same day the Wall Street Journal reported he had agreed to pay $1.6 million to former Playboy model Shera Bechard, who said Broidy had impregnated her during an affair.⁸ The nondisclosure agreement had been signed on December 1, 2017, and called for eight quarterly installments of $200,000. It was negotiated by Michael Cohen, then Trump’s personal attorney, using his company Essential Consultants LLC — the same entity Cohen used to pay adult-film actress Stormy Daniels $130,000.⁹

The deal became public after the FBI raided Cohen’s properties. Broidy’s lawyer announced in July 2018 that he would stop making payments, alleging an “intentional breach” of the NDA, and Bechard sued him in Los Angeles County Superior Court.¹⁰ An FEC complaint alleging the payment was a disguised campaign contribution to Trump was dismissed in February 2021, with the Commission citing Bechard’s sworn statement that the relationship was with Broidy and the money represented the net present value of child-support payments.⁹

Lobbying for the UAE and Saudi Arabia

Throughout 2017, Broidy and George Nader, an adviser to the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, ran a coordinated campaign to turn Washington against Qatar while pursuing more than $1 billion in defense and intelligence contracts from Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Internal documents from Broidy’s security firm Circinus LLC listed the two Gulf states as “clients.”¹¹

Broidy documented meetings with Trump at which he relayed messages directly from Gulf leaders and pushed anti-Qatar talking points, at one point calling Qatar an “axis of evil.” He also claimed to have influenced House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce to support anti-Qatar legislation.¹² To obscure the foreign source of the money, Nader routed $2.5 million to Broidy’s accounts through a Canadian company called Xiemen Investments Limited, and neither man registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Broidy maintained he was acting on his own initiative, not at the direction of a foreign government.¹¹

By late 2017, the UAE awarded Circinus an intelligence contract valued at up to $600 million over five years, with a first payment of $36 million clearing in January 2018.¹³ Saudi Arabia ultimately pulled back. A senior Saudi official said the government signed no contracts with Broidy or Nader and that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered an end to “engagement with these people.”¹¹

The anti-Qatar campaign came to light largely through leaked emails Broidy attributed to Qatari-sponsored hackers. He filed lawsuits in 2018 accusing Qatar and associated lobbyists of orchestrating a “hack-and-leak” operation. Qatar denied the allegations as “completely fabricated and without merit.”¹⁴ In April 2024, Broidy dropped the suits against former CIA officer Kevin Chalker and his firm Global Risk Advisors; the identity of whoever carried out the hack remained unclear.¹⁵ The broader litigation gained new life after lobbyist Joey Allaham settled with Broidy in August 2023 and admitted prior knowledge of the hack.¹⁶

The Federal 1MDB Guilty Plea

On October 20, 2020, Broidy pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Prosecutors said that between March 2017 and January 2018 he accepted $9 million from Jho Low, the fugitive Malaysian financier accused of masterminding the embezzlement of billions from Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund, to lobby the Trump administration on Low’s behalf.¹⁷

The lobbying had two goals. One was to pressure the Attorney General, the President, and other senior officials to drop civil forfeiture proceedings tied to the 1MDB theft. The other was to arrange the removal of a Chinese dissident living in the United States, later identified as Guo Wengui, on behalf of a Chinese government official.¹⁸ Neither effort succeeded.

Broidy paid $2.4 million of the $9 million to a co-conspirator, Nickie Lum Davis, and agreed to forfeit the remaining $6.6 million to the federal government. He also agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.¹⁷ He faced up to five years in prison.¹⁸

The Trump Pardon

Broidy never served time for the federal conviction. On January 20, 2021, in the final hours of his presidency, Trump pardoned Broidy as part of a batch of 73 pardons and commutations issued before Joe Biden’s inauguration.¹¹⁹ Axios described the move as “one last favor for a prominent political ally.”

LEO Technologies and the Federal Prison Contract

Since 2014, Broidy has run Broidy Capital Holdings, a private equity firm investing in artificial intelligence companies serving defense, homeland security, and law enforcement. Its two main platforms are LEO Technologies Holdings, focused on law enforcement, and Cynapse Holdings, focused on defense intelligence and national security.²⁰

LEO Technologies, where Broidy serves as founder and CEO, uses AI to translate, transcribe, and monitor prison phone calls. The company has characterized inmate calls as “the world’s largest concentration of criminally-minded activity — all on recorded lines, all legally accessible.”² Its Verus platform has been deployed in state prison systems including Florida, which paid $2.5 million to monitor calls from more than 80,000 inmates using Amazon-powered speech-to-text, and Georgia, which reported monitoring over 7.5 million calls within 13 months of signing in 2020.²¹ The technology has also been used in New York, Texas, Alabama, and various county sheriff’s departments.²²

In April 2026, LEO won its first federal contract: a $106 million deal with the Bureau of Prisons to translate, transcribe, and monitor phone calls across the federal prison system. The Bureau said LEO was one of six companies that responded to the solicitation. LEO’s attorneys said Broidy sets company strategy but does not handle daily operations, and the company said he played no role in the competitive bidding process.²

The Haaretz Defamation Lawsuit

On October 20, 2025, Broidy filed a defamation suit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida against the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The complaint targets a September 2025 article that identified Broidy as a “secret partner” at Koios, an Israeli firm accused of working for Qatar. Broidy’s legal team says he was only a passive investor and shareholder who cut ties with Koios upon learning of its Qatar connection, and alleges Haaretz mischaracterized a different company owned by one of Koios’s founders as a proxy for Koios in order to implicate him. Haaretz did not issue a retraction after Broidy’s demand.²³

1
Axios. Trump Pardons Elliott Broidy
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The Guardian. Trump Elliott Broidy Contract
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New York Times. Guilty Plea in New York Pension Bribery Case
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New York Times. Guilty Plea in New York Pension Bribery Case
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ProPublica. Prominent GOP Fundraiser Pleads Guilty in NY Pension Scandal
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Los Angeles Times. Elliott Broidy Trump
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Al Jazeera. Elliott Broidy: A History of Bribery and Pro-Israel Advocacy
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Wall Street Journal. Elliott Broidy Quits RNC Post After Report on Payment to Ex-Model
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Federal Election Commission. MUR 7407 Factual and Legal Analysis
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CNBC. Playboy Model Sues Elliott Broidy and Lawyers for Porn Star Stormy Daniels
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CBC. Broidy Trump Fundraiser Nader Anti-Qatar Contracts
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NBC News. AP Investigation: Trump Fundraiser’s Secret Lobbying Effort to Win $1B in Contracts
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WHYY. The Princes, The President, and the Fortune Seekers
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NBC News. Elliott Broidy Top Trump Fundraiser Accuses Ex-CIA Operative of Hacking
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New York Times. Elliott Broidy Email Hack Lawsuit
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Bloomberg Law. Ex-Trump Fundraiser Overcomes Qatar Effort to Shield Records
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Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General. Elliott Broidy Plea Press Release
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New York Times. Elliott Broidy Foreign Lobbying
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CNBC. Trump Pardons Expected Day Before Biden Inauguration
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Broidy Capital Holdings. Broidy Capital Holdings
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Corrections1. Fla. DOC Using AI to Transcribe Prisoner Phone Calls
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San Quentin News. Prisons Adopt High-Tech Monitoring
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JNS. Former Republican Party Official Sues Israeli Paper for Defamation