A prominent Los Angeles Republican power broker and fundraiser who has been linked to two ongoing political scandals is co-hosting a fundraiser for Donald Trump on the occasion of his first official visit to California as president.
Elliott Broidy, the deputy national finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, is set to preside over a $35,000-per-person event for Trump on Tuesday night at an undisclosed location in Beverly Hills.
Broidy and his wife, attorney Robin Rosenzweig, a discreet but powerful couple in Republican fundraising circles, have been tied through a trove of leaked documentation received by media organizations to the multibillion-dollar Malaysian graft scheme that has entangled actor Leonardo DiCaprio and Miranda Kerr, the model and wife of Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel. The documents also reveal a series of connections between Broidy and U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into foreign influence-peddling of the Trump administration.
Two Hollywood producers, Steven J. Brown and J. David Williams, had close ties to Broidy and are connected via various business dealings — including film projects — to Rick Gates, an associate of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who is now facing conspiracy, tax and bank fraud charges brought by Mueller. (Gates recently chose to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation.) Broidy also has played a role in advising George Nader, a Lebanese-American with longstanding ties to prominent figures in the United Arab Emirates who is now being investigated by Mueller for secret meetings between representatives from the UAE and the Trump team.
In addition to their efforts on behalf of Republican political causes, Broidy and Rosenzweig, who have a home in Beverly Hills and offices in Century City, have a long but sometimes fraught connection to Hollywood, where their efforts at producing and financing film projects have found them in a web of acrimony, lost business relationships and legal peril.
(Excerpt) Read More in: The Hollywood Reporter