Elliott Broidy

Broidy is the son of Sherman G. Broidy (1924–2014), an educator and property developer, and Dorothy Horowitz, a nurse, and was raised in Westwood.

He is Jewish.

Broidy says he put himself through the University of Southern California "working as a commercial salmon fisherman" and that he "saved $10,000 and bought an East Los Angeles laundromat that he visited almost every day."

Broidy graduated from USC where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting and Finance.

Elliott B. Broidy (born 1956/1957) is a disgraced former American lobbyist and businessman.

He was a Certified Public Accountant from 1982 to 1993.

Broidy began his career in finance at Arthur Andersen in the tax department.

One of his clients, Glen Bell, the founder of Taco Bell, hired him to manage his personal investments.

He was the managing director at Bell Enterprises from 1982 to 1991.

In 1991, he founded Broidy Capital Management, an investment firm, serving as its chairman and chief executive officer.

In the early 2000s, he established Markstone through which he invested in Israeli firms.

Broidy met with Benjamin Netanyahu, who was finance minister of Israel at the time.

He raised $800 million for Markstone primarily with close cooperation of elected managers of government workers' pension funds in California, New York, and other states, as well as the city of Los Angeles which he was on the board of trustees for the Los Angeles Fire and Police Pension fund.

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.

Between 2002 and 2004 he became a “Super Ranger", donating more than $300,000 to the George W. Bush 2004 presidential campaign. From 2004 to 2006 he raised campaign funds for many Republican candidates. In October 2006, he hosted a fundraiser for Bush, where $1 million was raised. 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.

From 2005 to 2008, he served as finance chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC).

He led the fund raising for Republicans from 2005 to 2008 as finance chairman for the Republican National Committee (RNC) including the 2008 elections involving John McCain and Sarah Palin and, for the 2016 elections, he was a top fund raiser for Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump.

In 2009, he was convicted in a public corruption and bribery case in New York.

In addition to his other activities, Broidy was the executive producer of two independent films: Sugar and Snake and Mongoose (both 2013).

In 2014, Markstone failed and all the investors lost money.

Broidy served as chairman of ESI Holdings, an event management firm.

In 2014, Broidy purchased the Virginia-based private security company Circinus LLC, which provided services to the United States and other governments.

The company claims to have hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with the United Arab Emirates.

From 2017 to April 2018 he was a deputy finance chairman of the RNC, resigning after The Wall Street Journal reported that he had been a party to a non-disclosure agreement with former Playboy Playmate Shera Bechard, under which he paid $1.6 million for her silence about a sexual affair between them.

After meeting with both Jared Kushner and later President Donald Trump in October 2017 at the White House and discussing Circinus with the President during which Broidy felt the President was "extremely enthusiastic" about the firm to gain a security contract with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in 2018, Broidy intended to take a business trip with George Nader to meet with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, in order to pitch the prince a $650 million contract with Circinus.

The plan fell apart when F.B.I. agents detained Nader upon his arrival at Dulles Airport.

In October 2017, in a private meeting with president Donald Trump, Broidy praised a paramilitary force his company Circinus was creating for the United Arab Emirates (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 United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

He was also harshly critical of Qatar, an American ally at odds with the UAE.

From April 2017 until April 13, 2018, he was a deputy finance chairman of the RNC.

According to Bruce Bialosky of the Republican Jewish Coalition "A lot of people talked a big game, but when he said he could raise big money, he actually did."

Revealed on March 22, 2018, after Tillerson had been fired, Broidy had been allegedly paid $2.6 million from George Nader to lobby the White House on behalf of the best interests of both the UAE and Saudi Arabia and against Qatar.

In March 2018, The New York Times reported that Lebanese-American businessman George Nader "worked for more than a year to turn 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."

In the end, Nader and Broidy’s anti-Qatar operation lost its momentum and failed.

As of May 2019, the United States Department of Justice was investigating Broidy's business and political dealings.

Becoming interested in politics after the 9/11 attacks, he joined the Republican Jewish Coalition and ultimately became a member of the board of directors, a position he still holds as of 2019.

In October 2020, Broidy pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered foreign agent working for Chinese and Malaysian interests.

He sought to lobby the highest levels of the U.S. Government to deport a dissident of the People's Republic of China (PRC) living in the United States, and tried to arrange meetings for a PRC Minister with the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and other high-level officials during the PRC Minister's visit to the United States, all while concealing the foreign principals he represented.

He had been charged as part of a federal probe into efforts to influence the Trump administration to stop investigations about a 1MDB Malaysian state fund fraud.

On January 20, 2021, Broidy was pardoned by President Donald Trump.