The story of the Trump administration has proven to be one of a lengthy campaign of corruption and scandal. The president and some of his closest allies have turned the presidency into a monument to Donald Trump and his inner circle; along those lines, some of his closest advisers include his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Neither Jared nor Ivanka have any experience with public service ahead of the Trump administration, but that didn’t stop the president from tapping them for high level positions anyway.
There’s now another story that has emerged of someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing getting roped in by the Trump administration. Elliott Broidy emerged at the front of the news cycle recently for having Trump lawyer Michael Cohen help him pay a Playboy model $1.6 million for silence about an affair between the two of them that had resulted in a pregnancy, and during the fallout from that scandal, he resigned from his position as deputy finance chair of the RNC.
The tide of scandal enveloping Broidy, however, is continuing to grow.
It’s now come out that his security company Circinus LLC managed to procure massive contracts from the Defense Department under the Trump administration after having stalled in efforts to do so for years. Broidy’s prominent position in the upper levels of Republican national political life begs the question of whether the contracts were awarded with regard to the actual competency of his company — or if they were a favor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmHyRwHoy7U
Since Trump took office, Circinus has obtained at least $800 million in foreign defense contracts and millions in contracts directly involving work for the U.S. Defense Department. The $4 million or so in DOD contracts includes a $3.9 million contract to carry out unspecified intelligence work for the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, otherwise known as INSCOM and a $242,011 payment associated with a separate contract with the Defense Security Service.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMC4f9H6MUA
As for the $800 million in foreign defense contracts, that total includes $200 million for work for the Romanian government-owned defense company Romarm. It also includes $600 million for work for the U.A.E. — a payout that came after Broidy lobbied President Trump on the country’s behalf. That lobbying reportedly included him pressing the president to dismiss the now-fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on account of him supposedly not being tough enough on Qatar, an adversary of both U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia.
Throughout his time in office, Trump has allied himself more closely with the Saudis and Emiratis than the Qataris, and Broidy using his position to push the president further down that path begs the question of whether or not he was properly registered as a foreign agent. Broidy worked with George Nader, an ally of the Emirati leadership who approached the Trump team on his own terms, The New York Times reported recently, to offer campaign help in late 2016.
The whole situation calls others to have been revealed over the course of Trump’s rise to power to mind; for instance, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort have both been scrutinized for failing to properly register as a foreign agent when acting as one.
The situation involving Broidy apparently using his access to the upper echelons of Republican power to get his company ahead financially is, in that light, one of many issues included in the corruption of the Trump administration.
Featured Image via SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
