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WASHINGTON (AP) – A former fundraiser for President Donald Trump pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of illegally pressuring Trump to drop an investigation into a Malaysian embezzlement scandal.
In a hearing before federal judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of Washington DC, Elliott Broidy, who held finance positions in the 2016 Trump campaign and on its inaugural committee, pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiring to violate the Law Registry of Foreign Agents (FARA).
Prosecutors alleged that Broidy received millions of dollars in payments from an unidentified foreign national to try to arrange the end of a US investigation into billions of dollars embezzled from 1MDB, a Malaysian government investment fund.
FARA requires people who pressure the US government to have foreign entities register with the Justice Department, which Broidy admitted he had not done. He faces a maximum prison sentence of five years and has agreed to lose $ 6.6 million.
Documents seen by Reuters show that Broidy also tried unsuccessfully to facilitate the extradition from the United States to China of billionaire Guo Wengui, who has participated in anti-China political activities in the United States with Trump’s former White House adviser Steve Bannon. .
Bannon is currently facing unrelated federal charges alleging that he and three others defrauded donors in a campaign to build a wall on the United States’ border with Mexico.
The judge did not immediately sentence Broidy and set a hearing for February. She said that with court approval, Broidy could travel outside of the United States and that she could travel within the country with the approval of pretrial services officials.
Malaysian and US authorities estimate that $ 4.5 billion of 1MDB was stolen in an elaborate scheme that spread around the world and involved high-level officials in the background, former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak , executives of the US bank Goldman Sachs and others.
– Reuters
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