New Details Revealed of RNC Fundraiser’s Lobbying for

China

A senior Chinese government official enlisted the help of a top fundraising official at the Republican
National Committee to lobby the Trump administration in 2017 to return a Chinese businessman living
in the U.S. who has long been sought by Beijing, according to a court document filed in Hawaii last week.

Sun Lijun, China’s then-vice minister of public security, met in a hotel suite in Shenzhen in May 2017
with Elliott Broidy, a venture capitalist and, at the time, national deputy finance chairman of the RNC,
according to the document. At Mr. Sun’s request, Mr. Broidy agreed to seek to use his influence with the
Trump administration to advocate for the removal of Guo Wengui, a Chinese businessman living in New
York, the document said.

Details of the meeting and other efforts Mr. Broidy made on behalf of the Chinese to remove Mr. Guo
show the lengths to which China has gone to pursue a priority that had stalled through official
diplomatic channels.

Beijing considers Mr. Guo a fugitive from bribery and other allegations in China but has been
unsuccessful in persuading the U.S. to hand him over. Since moving to an apartment in a Manhattan
hotel after fleeing China in 2014, he has publicized salacious and unproven allegations against senior
members of the Chinese Communist Party. He has denied the Chinese allegations and described the
attempts at his removal as a corrupt exercise by Communist Party officials.
An account of China’s and Mr. Broidy’s alliance was contained in a federal criminal charging document
filed against one of Mr. Broidy’s business partners, Nickie Lum Davis. She is charged with violating a law
that requires lobbyists for foreign governments or nationals to register that work with the Justice
Department. A lawyer for Ms. Davis didn’t return requests for comment.

Mr. Broidy, who resigned from his RNC post in 2018, wasn’t named in the document but is identifiable
from details it contains. He hasn’t been charged with any wrongdoing. A lawyer for Mr. Broidy, who has
denied any wrongdoing in the past, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Sun also isn’t named but identifiable by federal prosecutors’ description of him. He is now the
subject of a corruption investigation in China and couldn’t be reached for comment. An RNC
spokeswoman said: “We don’t have any knowledge of this.” The Chinese Embassy in Washington had no
comment.

Mr. Broidy tried to connect Mr. Sun with members of the Trump administration, after Mr. Sun told him
at their Shenzhen meeting he was “having trouble scheduling meetings with certain high-ranking United
States government officials,” the document said.

It also said Mr. Broidy sought the help of then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, with a memo including
content drafted by Mr. Sun, touting an “opportunity for significantly increased” law-enforcement
cooperation between the U.S. and China if the U.S. deported Mr. Guo. Mr. Broidy again met with Mr.
Sun at a hotel in Washington around the end of May 2017, the document said. Mr. Sessions said he
didn’t recall discussing the topics with Mr. Broidy and declined further comment.
 Elliott Broidy's Network
The Republican fundraiser's contacts range from senior Trump associates to foreign nation clients of his
intelligence-contracting firm to those caught up in the 1MDB fraud scandal. Mouseover to see details
about Mr. Broidy's connections.

The meeting in Shenzhen was orchestrated by Jho Low, a Malaysian businessman who is the alleged
mastermind of a multi-billion dollar fraud at a Malaysian development fund called 1Malaysia
Development Bhd., or 1MDB, according to the document, which doesn’t name Mr. Low but provides
details that identify him.

Over the two weeks before it, Mr. Low paid Mr. Broidy $4 million after Mr. Broidy had also agreed to
help Mr. Low in a separate Justice Department investigation Mr. Low faced, the court document said.
Mr. Low was later indicted in the U.S. for his alleged role in the theft of funds from 1MDB but has
avoided arrest and is believed to be living under Chinese protection. He has denied wrongdoing.
Overall, the account in the Hawaii case portrays an unusual arrangement where the alleged mastermind
of one of the largest financial scandals ever investigated by the Justice Department engaged a top U.S.
political donor to work behind the scenes in a bid to deport one of China’s most sought-after fugitives.

Neither of Mr. Broidy’s lobbying efforts—on Mr. Guo or 1MDB—was successful, the document noted.
Mr. Guo remains in the U.S. The Wall Street Journal reported last week on a separate FBI investigation
into investor complaints against Mr. Guo over his fundraising through a media company he is affiliated
with. The media company said it had carried out the private placement under the guidance of its lawyers
and that “all of the raised funds are intact.”

A New York state court in June dismissed a lawsuit filed by Mr. Guo against Dow Jones & Co., publisher
of the Journal, over its reporting about separate litigation Mr. Guo is involved in. Mr. Guo has indicated
he plans to appeal.

Ms. Davis and Mr. Broidy “willfully failed to disclose” to U.S. government officials that Mr. Broidy was
acting on behalf of Mr. Low, in violation of the law governing foreign influence in the U.S., the document
said, though the charges apply only to Ms. Davis.

The White House referred requests for comment on the document’s account of Mr. Broidy’s efforts to
the Justice Department, which declined to comment beyond the document.

In a statement, Mr. Guo said the case “is only the tip of a far-ranging campaign the Chinese Communist
Party has undertaken utilizing corrupt lawyers, government officials, and so-called lobbyists and political
consultants to influence the U.S. government at the highest levels to take action against me.”
Around the same time as Mr. Broidy’s alleged efforts, in May 2017, Chinese officials had also traveled to
New York to pressure Mr. Guo to return to China, sparking a diplomatic standoff and the near arrest of
the officials by the FBI.

Mr. Broidy was a vice chairman for the Trump campaign’s joint fund with the Republican Party during
the 2016 campaign, helping it raise more than $108 million. He also runs a company that provides open-
source intelligence research and analysis for foreign governments and other clients.

Prosecutors last year stepped up a probe into whether Mr. Broidy sought to improperly profit from his
connections to the Trump administration, the Journal reported in 2019, citing people familiar with the
matter, including through his work for Mr. Low and clients of his research firm. The status of that
investigation isn’t known.

Mr. Broidy’s efforts to extract Mr. Guo also involved casino mogul and then-RNC finance chair Steve
Wynn, the document said. It didn’t identify Mr. Wynn by name but he was identifiable from details. In
June 2017, Mr. Broidy told an associate that Mr. Wynn had “reiterated to POTUS” the necessity of
denying Mr. Guo’s visa application, the document said. The pair called President Trump from Mr.
Wynn’s yacht in August 2017 to check on Mr. Guo’s status within the U.S., it said.

A lawyer for Mr. Wynn said Mr. Wynn had cooperated in the investigation. “His limited role here was
not on behalf of a foreign government but rather entirely for the benefit of the United States,” attorney
Reid Weingarten said.

In one message sent to Mr. Wynn via his wife, Mr. Broidy allegedly said Mr. Sun had promised to “return
certain US citizens held hostage” in China, would accept a “very large number” of Chinese “illegal
immigrants” the U.S. was trying to deport and “offered new assistance with regard to North Korea,” the
document said.
Later, Mr. Wynn’s wife, Andrea Hissom, responded on her husband’s behalf: “This is with the highest
levels of the state department and the defense department. They are working on this.” She couldn’t be
reached for comment.

The Journal reported in 2017 that Mr. Wynn had delivered a letter from the Chinese government about
Mr. Guo to Mr. Trump, which Mr. Wynn denied.

Mr. Broidy received at least $9 million in total from Mr. Low, largely through former Fugees rapper Pras
Michel, the document said. Mr. Michel was separately indicted last year for allegedly funneling millions
of dollars from Mr. Low to then-President Obama’s 2012 re-election effort, and has pleaded not guilty.
An attorney for Mr. Michel had no comment. A spokeswoman for Mr. Obama previously declined to
comment on the investigation into the donations.

Mr. Broidy and the others met with Mr. Low in a hotel in Bangkok in May 2017, where Mr. Broidy agreed
to lobby the Trump administration for a “favorable result” for Mr. Low, the document said.

As part of that effort, the document said, Mr. Broidy began pressuring the White House within weeks for
a meeting and golf session between Mr. Trump and Malaysia’s then-prime minister Najib Razak, who
was sentenced to 12 years in prison in Malaysia last month for his role in the 1MDB fraud.

“It would be extremely helpful to me if you could confirm the golf date today with POTUS,” Mr. Broidy
texted a White House official on July 3, 2017, the document said. The official responded: “I’m sure it will
get done.”

Inside the White House, some officials grew perplexed at Mr. Broidy’s persistent outreach on behalf of a
foreign government, according to one former official. Mr. Najib and Mr. Trump met at the White House
on Sept. 12. A White House official told the Journal in 2018 that the Justice Department probe wasn’t
raised.

The next month, Mr. Broidy met with the president, later telling Mr. Low that he had raised the 1MDB
investigation with the president then, the document said. The White House didn’t answer a question
about what was discussed.

Mr. Broidy also sought to influence a meeting between then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Mr.
Najib, drafting talking points for Mr. Tillerson that had originated with Mr. Low. After their meeting, Mr.
Broidy said the Malaysians had been happy with it but he expressed disappointment, according to the
court document that “my name was not mentioned - no plug. ;- .” A spokeswoman for Mr. Tillerson
didn’t respond to a request for comment.

In April 2018, Mr. Broidy quit his RNC position after the Journal reported that he had agreed to pay $1.6
million to a former Playboy model who said Mr. Broidy had impregnated her. Mr. Wynn stepped down
from his RNC post after a Journal report detailed a decadeslong pattern of sexual misconduct by him. He
has denied the allegations.