NEW YORK — A federal grand jury in New York is investigating top Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy, examining whether he used his position as vice chair of President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee to drum up business deals with foreign leaders, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press and people familiar with the matter.

A wide-ranging subpoena the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn recently sent to Trump’s inaugural committee seeks records relating to 20 individuals and businesses. All have connections to Broidy, his investment and defense contracting firms, and foreign officials he pursued deals with — including the current president of Angola and two politicians in Romania.

Prosecutors appear to be investigating whether Broidy exploited his access to Trump for personal gain and violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it illegal for U.S. citizens to offer foreign officials “anything of value” to gain a business advantage. Things of value in this case could have been an invitation to the January 2017 inaugural events or access to Trump.

A statement released to the AP by Broidy’s attorneys said that at no point did Broidy or his global security firm Circinus have a contract or exchange of money with “any Romanian government agency, proxy or agent.” It also said that while Circinus did reach an agreement with Angola in 2016 there was no connection whatsoever to the inauguration or Broidy’s role on the inaugural committee.

“Any implication to the contrary is completely false,” the statement said.

The Brooklyn probe appears to be distinct from an inquiry by Manhattan federal prosecutors into the inaugural committee’s record $107 million fundraising and whether foreigners unlawfully contributed.

It followed a request last year by Democratic U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut that the Justice Department investigate whether Broidy “used access to President Trump as a valuable enticement to foreign officials who may be in a position to advance Mr. Broidy’s business interests abroad.”

Brooklyn federal prosecutors and the president’s inaugural committee declined to comment on the grand jury proceedings, which are secret. But two people familiar with the matter told the AP that the committee has already complied with the subpoena, issued in April, and a third said the FBI has interviewed at least one of Broidy’s business associates named in the subpoena.

The people spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation.

Broidy, a 61-year-old Los Angeles businessman, made a fortune in investments before moving into defense contracting and has played prominent roles in GOP fundraising, including as finance chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2006 to 2008 and vice chair of the Trump Victory Committee in 2016.

But there have been problems along the way. In 2009, investigators looked into the New York state pension fund’s decision to invest $250 million with Broidy and found he had plied state officials with nearly $1 million in illegal gifts. Broidy pleaded guilty to a felony but it was later knocked down to a misdemeanor after he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and pay back $18 million in management fees.

Another scandal came last year when Broidy stepped down as deputy finance chair of the RNC after reports that he agreed to pay $1.6 million as part of a confidentiality agreement to a former Playboy model with whom he had an affair. That payment was arranged in 2017 by Trump’s longtime lawyer Michael Cohen.

In the Brooklyn federal probe, Broidy’s is the first name listed in the grand jury subpoena, followed by his Los Angeles investment firm and four limited liability companies linked to him.

It also sought records related to George Nader, a Broidy associate who served as an adviser to the United Arab Emirates, provided grand jury testimony to special counsel Robert Mueller and was recently jailed on federal child pornography charges.

Several of the names included in the subpoena also appeared in a cache of leaked emails anonymously distributed last year to several news organizations, including the AP. Broidy has contended the emails were hacked from his account, and that several of the documents were altered or forged. His attorneys declined to specify to the AP which emails they believed were doctored.

As provided to the AP, the emails show Broidy invited two Angolan leaders named in the subpoena to Trump’s inaugural, and that the invitation was accompanied by a multimillion-dollar contract for Circinus to provide security services in Angola that Broidy asked be signed ahead of the events.

In a follow-up note to one of the Angolans — then-Defense Minister and current President João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço — Broidy discussed a planned visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, and in the same correspondence demanded a past-due payment for Circinus’ services.

“Many preparations have been made in advance of your visit,” Broidy wrote in February 2017, “including additional meetings at the Capitol and the Department of Treasury.”

The Angolan Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

The grand jury subpoena also included several names associated with Broidy’s work on behalf of Romanian politicians at a time when Broidy’s defense company was seeking a lucrative contract to provide security services to the Romanian government — a deal Broidy’s representatives said never came to fruition.

Those names included Sorin Grindeanu, who at the time was prime minister, and Liviu Dragnea, a former parliamentary leader who began serving a 3½-year prison sentence in May for abuse of power. Both officials also attended inaugural events.

Dragnea became a focus of European Union efforts to bolster the rule of law because of his efforts to remove an anti-corruption prosecutor, Laura Kovesi, who investigated him. According to the emails obtained by the AP, Broidy tried to persuade California Republican Rep. Ed Royce, then the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, not to meet with Kovesi during a planned visit to Bucharest in 2017.

“This meeting will not only cause significant issues within the present government (but) potentially diminish the good will which we wish to achieve amongst the Romanian people,” Broidy wrote to Royce.

The emails show a Circinus lawyer, Matt Britton, resigned in October 2017 after expressing alarm to company executives about corruption concerns related to the firm’s Romanian contract negotiations.

“These are FULL STOP issues in my judgment,” the attorney wrote. “NO MATTER HOW LONG THAT TAKES IT ALL MUST BE DONE IN ADVANCE OF ANY CONTRACT WITH ROMANIA.”

Britton, who did not respond to a request for comment, is not among those named in the subpoena.

While national security experts will debate the merits of the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration for years to come, one thing is clear: the pact always ensured Washington and Tehran were headed towards a nuclear crisis. The only question was when it would happen—not if.

And none of that is President Trump’s fault. In fact, we can thank President Obama for this growing international crisis – one that could even balloon into a shooting war.

IRAN ANNOUNCES IT WILL ENRICH URANIUM BEYOND NUCLEAR DEAL LIMITS

The devil is in the details of the deal itself. How it was structured, and the items that were omitted, by President Obama, Ben Rhodes and their allies, ultimately sowed the seeds of its own self-destruction.

But before I get to the deal’s flaws, I must give credit where credit is due: The deal itself was not a complete failure, in that it does do one thing quite well (albeit temporarily), and that is it does, for a long stretch of time, keep Iran’s nuclear bomb aspirations locked down. Tehran agreed to, among other things, intrusive international inspections, a cap on its uranium stockpile to 300kgs (a 98 percent reduction) and limits on uranium enrichment far below anything that can be used to make a nuclear weapon. Additionally, the path to a plutonium-based nuclear weapon is largely eliminated as well.

That’s all for the good. Before the 2015 accord was signed, Iran had enough centrifuges and nuclear material to build as many as 8 to 10 nuclear weapons, perhaps creating the first one within three months—with the potential of sparking what could be a nasty regional war with large losses of life.

Today, that timeframe has been pushed back to a year. For that, the Obama administration surely deserves praise.

Unfortunately, this is where the good news ends, in large part because the agreement itself has several massive problems that turn it from a historic and transformative accord into a giant band-aid that ensures a crisis, sooner or later.

For starters, the deal clearly leaves intact large sections of Iran’s civilian nuclear program—with the ability to still enrich nuclear fuel—intact. While credit should be given for the large restrictions put in place by Obama’s negotiating team, the problem is never truly eliminated, just scaled back.

History will show that it was President Obama’s band-aid approach to foreign policy that deserved the credit for this disaster.

And that problem will surely get worse over time, as the poison pill in the deal was always that almost all its restrictions, designed to prevent Tehran from building a nuclear bomb, expire within 12-15 years after the deal was signed. That’s right, in a little more than a decade, Iran would have been free to do whatever it wanted with its nuclear program, unless a new accord was signed.

And that’s not all. The deal itself never addresses the ways in which Iran could deliver a nuclear weapon. That means no restrictions on Iran’s quickly growing capabilities to research and develop ballistic and cruise missiles. That’s like taking a criminal’s ammo away but allowing him to keep the gun, and worse still, allowing him to build better and better guns—think long-range missiles like ICBMs that could hit the U.S. homeland or allies like Europe—while waiting to get his ammo back.

There was also no attempt in this agreement dealing with Iran’s thug-like behavior internationally. Tehran has been causing problems throughout the Middle East for decades. From screaming “death to America” and threating Israel for decades, to arming terror groups around the region and more, Iran is perhaps the ultimate of rogue nations. It is hellbent on dislodging America from the Middle East for good. And yet, none of this was addressed in the nuclear accord, nor was Iran held accountable for any of its aggressive acts throughout the region.

Taking all of that into consideration, the Trump administration was put in a terrible bind upon taking office.

Staying in the deal meant the threat posed by Iran would only grow over time, and would leave an economically powerful and rich Iran—thanks to its sales of oil and gas—with the ability to develop a nuclear arsenal shortly after Trump left office.

The other option—which it seems Trump has chosen—was to take on Tehran now, when it is much weaker, rather than leaving the problem to a future U.S. president to deal with (much like Obama did to Trump on North Korea). That meant pulling out of the deal, imposing sanctions and trying to force the issue to a head now, when America’s position is much stronger.

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What happens next is anyone’s guess. At least for the moment, Iran seems to be pushing for talks with Europe. Tehran threatened 60 days ago to abandon many of its commitments under the deal if Europe didn’t meet a deadline this weekend to somehow relieve sanctions imposed by the Trump administration. Only a week ago, Iran exceeded the cap on its stockpile of low-grade uranium. Then, to make matters worse, it said it will resume purifying uranium beyond the 3.67 percent enrichment allowed under the agreement. While it would need to get to 90 percent enrichment in order to build a nuclear weapon, all of this put together means only one thing: a showdown is coming.

Whatever happens now – whether it is a regional war in the Middle East, or a time of tense negotiations that lasts for years – it makes no rational sense to blame President Trump for a crisis with Iran. History will show that it was President Obama’s band-aid approach to foreign policy that deserved the credit for this disaster.

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After two major earthquakes within days in Southern California, seismologists are warning the area could see additional sizable temblors within the next week.

The 7.1 magnitude earthquake that struck at 8:19 p.m. Friday was the largest one in Southern California in nearly 20 years and was centered 11 miles from Ridgecrest, the same area of the desert where a 6.4-magnitude temblor hit on Thursday.

No fatalities or major injuries were reported, but the quake left behind cracked and burning buildings, broken roads, obstructed railroad tracks and leaking water and gas lines.

CALIFORNIANS BRACE FOR AFTERSHOCKS AFTER PAIR OF POTENT QUAKES; GOVERNOR CONFIDENT ABOUT FEDERAL COMMITMENT TO ASSIST STATE

In a news conference on Saturday, California Institute of Technology seismologist Egill Hauksson said that Ridgecrest was once known as the “earthquake capital of the world” because it had many small quakes along the fault.

Hauksson added that scientists believe the probability of another magnitude 7 over the next week is about 3 percent as of Saturday, but one or two magnitude 6 quakes are expected “in the next week,” FOX11 reported.

More than 3,000 earthquakes have been recorded in the Searles Valley sequence, according to Lucy Jones, another seismologist at Caltech.

The area could see up to 30,000 aftershocks over the next six months, though many of those will be too small for people to notice.

Jones, a former science adviser at the U.S. Geological Survey, said the new quake on Friday probably ruptured along about 25 miles of fault line and was part of a continuing sequence.

The seismic activity is unlikely to affect fault lines outside of the area, Jones said, noting that the gigantic San Andreas Fault is far away.

“The sequence is decaying, and the decay rate is on the high side of average. So the probabilities of more aftershocks are dropping,” Jones said on Twitter. ” In the next week, M4s are still certain, a couple of M5s are likely, but larger quakes are looking more improbable.”

NEW 7.1 EARTHQUAKE HITS SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA — 1 DAY AFTER LARGEST TEMBLOR IN DECADES

The earthquake on Friday jolted an area from Sacramento to Mexico and prompted the evacuation of the Navy’s largest single land holding, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in the Mojave Desert.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom estimated that more than $100 million in economic damage, adding that governments must strengthen alert systems and building codes, and residents should make sure they know how to protect themselves during an earthquake.

“It is a wake-up call for the rest of the state and other parts of the nation, frankly,” he said at a news conference.

Hauksson said that while the recent quakes have not been on the more famous fault lines across the state, residents still need to be wary of when the next “big one” could strike.

“We’re expecting large earthquakes on all the faults in Southern California,” he told reporters on Saturday. “In particular, (the Ridgecrest) area is quite active and has been since we’ve had good records, since the 1930s.”

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With the possibility of aftershocks and temperatures forecast to reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit over the next several days, officials were taking precautions.

The California National Guard was sending 200 troops, logistical support, and aircraft, Maj. Gen. David Baldwin said. The Pentagon had been notified, and the entire California Military Department was put on alert, he said. The California Office of Emergency Services also brought in cots, water, and meals and set up cooling centers in the region, Director Mark Ghilarducci said.

In Ridgecrest, local fire and police officials said they were initially swamped by calls for medical and ambulance service. But police Chief Jed McLaughlin said there was “nothing but minor injuries such as cuts and bruises, by the grace of God.”

In Trona, a town of about 2,000 people considered the gateway to Death Valley, fire officials said up to 50 structures were damaged. San Bernardino County Supervisor Robert Lovingood said FEMA delivered a tractor-trailer full of bottled water because of damage to water lines. Newsom declared a state of emergency for the county.

Fox News’ Louis Casiano and The Associated Press contributed to this report.