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Trump Pal Used Access to Trump to Push Policy and Gain Large Government Contracts

Trump Pal Used Access to Trump to Push Policy and Gain Large Government Contracts

Last updated on: May 23, 2018 at 4:00 am by Susan Wright

Trump Pal Used Access to Trump to Push Policy and Gain Large Government Contracts 2018-05-23T00:43:20-04:00 Susan Wright

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You should get used to hearing the name “Elliot Broidy.” Things surrounding Donald Trump’s old pal and associate are starting to pick up – and not in a good way.

On Monday, news of the money-making deal between Broidy and George Nader, as they lobbied against Qatar, on behalf of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates revealed they profited by nearly $1 billion in contracts.

That, apparently, was only the tip of the iceberg.

Tuesday’s report is that Broidy’s company during that same time managed to secure government contracts that it had been seeking for years. The payout on those contracts was making Broidy a LOT of money, as well.

The company, a Virginia-based security firm called Circinus LLC, is owned by Broidy and has secured at least $800 million in foreign defense contracts since Trump took office. All of those payouts came after Broidy reportedly worked his contacts in D.C.—including Trump—to advocate for positions favorable to the countries that Circinus now lists as clients.

In addition to its newfound international fortune, Circinus received Defense Department payments totaling more than $4 million in August and September 2017, the largest in the company’s history, a review of available contracts found.

Coincidence?

We’re still going.

It was two months after that that a report in The New Yorker revealed that Broidy had dropped $200,000 in that mystery bank account opened by Donald Trump’s longtime “fixer,” Michael Cohen.

The $200,000 was part of a $1.6 million payoff of a Playboy model Broidy was allegedly having an affair with, at one point. During the course of the relationship, she became pregnant and had an abortion.

But back to Broidy and those government contracts:

Circinus, formed in 2001, has been bidding on contracts with the Pentagon since 2011, but has had limited success. Prior to 2017, Circinus had been paid a total of just $7,501 for its work on various defense contracts. Then, in August 2017 it finally received $3.9 million for a contract it had begun bidding on in 2013 with the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM). The INSCOM contract—which is for unidentified intelligence services—nearly doubled the company’s income for the year. The following month, Circinus received $242,011 from the Defense Security Service for a separate contract.

We’re still talking coincidences, right?

Circinus has seen a boon in business since Trump took office. In addition to the more than $4 million in U.S. defense contracts it inked in late 2017, Broidy’s company has secured a reported $200 million in deals with the state-owned Romanian defense company Romarm. That’s in addition to the $600 million contract Broidy secured with the UAE, which came after two Oval Office meetings with Trump in late 2017 where Broidy lobbied the president on several fronts favorable to the Emiratis.

Trump isn’t draining the swamp. Trump is the swamp!

Broidy also worked a California Republican congressman by the name of Rep. Ed Royce, on behalf of Romania.

Royce is the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Royce visited Romania in August 2017 – more coincidences, here – at the same time Broidy happened to be, in, of all places, Romania.

The contract with Romarm came right after.

Broidy wasn’t done with Royce. He pressed him to take a harder stance against Qatar, as well, on behalf of the Saudis and the Emirates. He later boasted about how he’d managed to force Royce to be critical of Qatar.

Royce—who received the maximum legal campaign contribution from Broidy—eventually backed legislation critical of Qatar.

Good grief. That’s blatant.

Broidy’s emails were hacked, which is a whole, other problem. From those emails, we get a picture of just how busy 2017 was for he and his company.

In August, Broidy tried to influence a Justice Department investigation into the Malaysian state-run company 1MBD, according to the emails. Included in the hacked correspondences was a draft of a contract that would have netted Broidy $75 million if the Justice Department investigation came to an end, according to emails obtained by The Wall Street Journal. Broidy’s attorney denied his client tried to insert himself into the investigation.

But in addition to his direct access to Trump, Broidy also has a relationship with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who sought Broidy’s recommendations for U.S. attorney nominees shortly after Trump was elected, ProPublica reported. Broidy, a lifelong venture capitalist with interest in developing movies, has no background in legal work.

The emails further showed how he used his access to Trump, in order to enrich himself through his benefactors in Saudi Arabia and Iran.

In October 2017, Broidy sent an email to his new partner, George Nader (another name you can expect to hear more of). Apparently, he really wanted to get rid of then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who he saw as “insufficiently hostile” to Qatar.

“President Trump asked me about the job Rex was doing,” Broidy reported to Nader following the meeting. “I responded that he was performing poorly and should be relieved but only at a good time, politically.”

There are a lot of stories about Broidy out there, right now. Don’t expect this to be the last of them. I have a feeling what drops next will likely outdo even this.

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