There is no evidence Elliott Broidy’s links to Trump helped AI company win contract to monitor prisoners’ phone calls

Under the contract, awarded by the Bureau of Prisons to LEO Technologies, the company will use artificial intelligence to translate, transcribe and monitor prison phone calls. Broidy lists himself as the founder and CEO of LEO.

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The company has previously won awards in state and local prison systems, but the new contract with the Bureau of Prisons marks the first time it is doing business with the federal government. On its website, the Texas-based company says that prisoners’ phone calls “represent the world’s largest concentration of criminally-minded activity – all on recorded lines, all legally accessible”.

Broidy is a longtime businessman, Republican backer and pro-Israel philanthropist. His 2020 guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, for secretly lobbying Trump’s White House on behalf of Chinese and Malaysian interests, came 11 years after a separate New York state criminal conviction for paying off state officials to get business for his investment company.

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Broidy has been the subject of a dizzying series of colorful headlines over the years. In 2009, he pleaded guilty in a fraud case after prosecutors said Broidy paid almost $1m to New York state officials to secure business with the state’s pension fund. The payoffs included taking officials on luxury trips to Israel and Italy, and a secret $300,000 investment in a low-budget movie called Chooch.

In 2012, a judge reduced Broidy’s felony conviction to a misdemeanor of attempting to reward official misconduct.

Broidy soon emerged as a major Trump supporter and was named national deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee in 2017.

In 2018, Broidy, who was married, stepped down from his official fundraising role when news broke that he had agreed to pay $1.6m to a former Playboy model who became pregnant during an affair with him and who had then had an abortion. In a statement he issued at the time, he wrote: “She alone decided that she did not want to continue with the pregnancy and I offered to help her financially during this difficult period. We have not spoken since that time.”