Your Shabbat Edition • January 29, 2021
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YOUR SHABBAT EDITION • JANUARY 29, 2021 Stories for you to savor over Shabbat and Sunday GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 1 GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM LETTER FROM L.A. Why did these rabbis seek a pardon for Elliot Broidy? By Louis Keene When former President Donald Trump, in one of his Israel human rights organization, who said he obliged last acts in office, granted an executive pardon to Broidy without hesitation. “In my view, it was a matter confessed felon Elliott Broidy, the White House cited of supporting a person who really had his heart in the letters in Broidy’s support from some unusual sources: right place.” five Los Angeles rabbis. While Broidy was on Wiesenthal Center’s Board of Broidy, a multimillionaire businessman and prominent Trustees, May said, he helped secure funding from a Jewish philanthropist, pleaded guilty to illegal foreign trust which pays for about 25,000 students from lobbying on Oct. 20. Broidy was covertly paid millions disadvantaged areas to visit the Wiesenthal Center’s to push federal officials to drop one of the largest Holocaust museum every year. May said the program, embezzlement investigations in the history of the which costs around $500,000 annually, has been in Justice Department. He also lobbied officials to deport place for five years. a critic of the Chinese government who resides in In the case for which he was pardoned, Broidy lobbied Brooklyn. federal officials to deport a Chinese dissident and drop Why, with the ink barely dry on his guilty plea, did its investigation of a billion-dollar embezzlement these rabbis come to Elliott Broidy’s defense? scandal at the Malaysian sovereign investment fund 1MDB. Broidy was paid $6 million by a Malaysian One rabbi — who faced criticism about his decisions financier for his efforts, according to a Oct. 20 DoJ from congregants — provided a brief public statement announcement of the plea. Broidy would have to defend his support. received a success fee of up to $75 million had the That statement, along with interviews with three of the Justice Department dropped the case, according to the rabbis conducted by the Forward, produced a long New York Times. explanation — they believe that Broidy is a good May described Broidy’s crime — failing to register as a person, a family man who regrets his mistakes; that foreign agent, which would require disclosing to the his charity outweighs his malfeasance; and that he U.S. government who and what he was lobbying for — didn’t really do anything that bad — as well as a short as a legal error, but not necessarily a moral one. one: Broidy is their friend and their patron, and he Furthermore, May said Broidy maintained that he asked them to. didn’t need to register since it was an individual, not a Their answers brought into focus a man whose government, writing the check. (That assertion is unfailing generosity has made him indispensable to incorrect. The Foreign Agents Registration Act includes the Jewish community in the eyes of some of its most foreign individuals in its definition of foreign influential leaders, and the leaders who stayed loyal to principals.) a man even the second time he pleaded guilty to a As for his thoughts on Broidy lobbying for the felony. dropping of the investigation or for the deportation of “I look at him and I say, here’s a man that’s like an iron a Chinese dissident, May said this was the first he had marshmallow — tough on the outside, soft on the heard of it, and didn’t know enough to be comfortable inside,” said Rabbi Meyer May, executive director of discussing it. “I don’t deal with the social action of the the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international pro- center,” May said, “I deal with the money.” Why did these rabbis seek a pardon for Elliot Broidy? 2 GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM He added, “It’s not rocket science to know that the In addition to his contributions to local synagogues, Wiesenthal Center would be advocating for the Broidy has donated to myriad causes outside the dissident who’s working for human rights, not the Jewish community, including charities for veterans and other way around.” at-risk youth. A patient wing of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center bears his family’s name. May said Broidy is a complicated human being who deserved a second chance. “There were some things Dunner said he did not expect to receive a donation in that are not admirable about Elliott Broidy, but there return for his letter, nor did he think future donations were some things that were.” depended on it. Indeed, he said he would have done this for any congregant, irrespective of their party Letters written on Broidy’s behalf have helped the affiliation, financial heft, or malfeasance. former Republican National Committee finance chair avoid prison in the past. But the Young Israel rabbi also believed that being a major Trump donor had put a target on Broidy’s back, Broidy’s earlier run-in with federal authorities came in and that the charge against his congregant was blown 2009, when he pleaded guilty to bribing New York out of proportion. state officials to invest public pensions through his private equity firm. Andrew Cuomo, then New York “The one thing I’ve learned in America is everyone is attorney general, called Broidy’s $1 million’s worth of guilty of a crime,” said Dunner, who was born in the illegal gifts, which included lavish trips to Israel, “an United Kingdom. “If you were audited, there are things old-fashioned payoff of state officials.” that are irregular in your tax returns. Once they decided to go for Elliott Broidy, they were going to find Though the felony charge he admitted to in that case something.” (The charge was brought by then-Acting carried a maximum sentence of four years behind Assistant Attorney General Brian C. Rabbitt, who was bars, Broidy avoided prison after Kenneth Langone, an previously Attorney General William Barr’s chief of original investor in Home Depot, and former New York staff. Barr was a Trump appointment.) governor George Pataki wrote letters to the judge on his behalf. Broidy was also forced to pay $18 million in Broidy ran afoul of a law that is by nature broad, but restitution. The charge was later reduced to a which has received increased vigilance since Trump’s misdemeanor. (Langone was not mentioned in the election. Trump press release about Broidy, but Home Depot founder Bernard Marcus was.) The Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, was passed in 1938 to combat Nazi propaganda. But the Rabbi Pini Dunner, rabbi of Young Israel of North Department of Justice brought only seven FARA cases Beverly Hills, an Orthodox synagogue where Broidy is between 1966 and 2015, and FARA registrations falling a member, knew that letters had gotten Broidy out of sharply in the 1990s. It revived enforcement of the trouble in the past, but it did not influence his decision statute in recent years after an initial push in 2016 by to write to Trump. Congress, which has since passed about a dozen bills to increase funding and eliminate exemptions. “My role as a rabbi is to take care of those who come to me in need,” Dunner said. It was mere months into the Trump presidency when Broidy, who helped raise a record $107 million for And Broidy, who faced up to five years for the felony Trump’s inauguration fund, began lobbying the lobbying charge, had always been generous with president, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Dunner. “He’s the kind of person that when you call other high ranking White House officials to drop the him up and say you need money for something, he 1MDB investigation. says, ‘Sure, how much do you need?’” said Dunner. “His generosity comes naturally.” According to court documents, Broidy admitted to Why did these rabbis seek a pardon for Elliot Broidy? 3 GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM trying to set up a golf outing in the summer of 2017 for Suchard said. “That’s the real Elliott Broidy.” Trump and Prime Minister Najib Razak, who was already known as the subject of the investigation. Rabbi Steve Leder, senior rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard (Najib is suspected of pilfering $3.5 billion from the Temple, a Reform synagogue in Los Angeles where fund.) Broidy is a member, emailed a statement to members about his letter after receiving complaints from Simultaneously, Broidy was advocating for the congregants about his letter to Trump on Broidy’s removal of Chinese billionaire and political dissident behalf. Guo Wengui on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party and the United Arab Emirates, which claims Guo owes Leder officiated the bar mitzvah of Broidy’s son, and it $3 billion. Broidy attempted to set up meetings for a the Broidy family is a major donor to Wilshire Chinese government official with Sessions and then- Boulevard Temple’s elementary school. A school Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly when the bulletin published in 2019 said Broidy and his wife, official visited the United States. Robin Rosenzweig, contributed between $25,000 and $49,999 to the endowment that year. Though both lobbying efforts were unsuccessful, Broidy’s failure to disclose that foreign officials were “I did for this congregant what I would have done paying him millions of dollars for his work ran afoul of under any administration for any Temple member who FARA. has sinned, repented and changed his or her life for the better as a result,” Leder said in the statement.