Elliott Broidy

Affiliations

• Bipartisan Coalition for American Security: Chairman
• Republican Jewish Coalition: Board of Directors
• Republican National Committee: Former finance chairman
• Simon Wiesenthal Center: Former board member

Government

• Homeland Security Advisory Council: Former member, Future of Terrorism Task Force
• Los Angeles Fire and Police Pension Fund: Former trustee

Business

• Broidy Capital Management: CEO
• Threat Deterrence LLC: Chairman
• Markstone Capital: Former chairman

Education

• University of Southern California

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Elliott Broidy is an Israeli-American investor and philanthropist who has been active on the boards and advisory councils of various philanthropic organizations and right-wing pressure groups, including the Republican Jewish Coalition.[1] A self-professed security expert, Broidy served on the Homeland Security Advisory Council and Future of Terrorism Task Force under former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.[2] He is also a former finance chairman for the Republican National Committee.[3]

Broidy is the board chairman and driving force behind the Bipartisan Coalition for American Security (BCAS), an advocacy group founded in 2013 that promotes a robust U.S. military budget, corporate-friendly free-trade policies, and a hawkish U.S. posture toward Iran and other purported threats to the United States. Joe Lieberman, the neoconservative former Democratic senator from Connecticut who along with former Republican Sen. Scott Brown was appointed an honorary co-chair of the group, said in June of that year that BCAS "was something brewing within Elliott, something he thought was important."[4]

According to a BCAS press release, one of the group's first public activities was a roundtable in which Broidy, Lieberman, and Brown spoke out against a proposed House amendment that would have limited the National Security Agency's authority to collect information without warrant from Americans' digital communications. The measure—known as the Amash amendment after its chief sponsor, Rep. Jason Amash (R-MI)—narrowly failed, a result the press release celebrated as "embody[ing] the coalition's principles of furthering national security prowess."[5]

Broidy, who is based in Los Angeles, is the CEO of Broidy Capital Management and the chairman of Threat Deterrence LLC.

In 2009, Broidy was embroiled in a corruption and bribery scandal while he was the head of Markstone Capital. He pled guilty to bribing at least four New York State pension officials with $75,000 in luxury travel accommodations to Israel and Italy in an effort to secure a $250-million contract for Markstone. Broidy was also, according to the New York Daily News, "said to have shelled out $90,000 in living expenses and hospital bills to the girlfriend of a top [comptroller] aide and another $44,000 to the girlfriend’s family." Although he initially faced up to four years in prison for his role in the scandal, Broidy's crime was reduced to a misdemeanor after he agreed to testify against a corrupt official who had accepted his bribes and to pay $18 million into the state's pension fund in restitution.[6]

At the same time he was bribing New York pension fund officials, Broidy was serving as a trustee of the Los Angeles Fire and Police Pension fund, a position he resigned when an investigation into his activities in New York was opened. "While it is fairly common for people to move fluidly back and forth between the investor world and the fund management world," noted one profile of the investor, "Broidy is the only person we can think of to have a foot in both at once."[7]