OPINION:
Elliott Broidy, a one-time Republican fundraiser for and friend of former President Donald Trump, is waging protracted legal combat to prove that the Persian Gulf powerhouse Qatar led an illegal operation to steal his emails and spread them to Washington reporters.
In Mr. Broidy’s 2019 lawsuit, the back-and-forth filings and judge’s orders in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia have slowed the case to a crawl.
But then, last month, there was a bombshell.
Joseph Allaham, a New York-based political consultant whom Mr. Broidy accused of being part of a Qatar-directed “hack and smear,” switched sides.
He broke with another defendant, his former business partner Nicolas Muzin at Stonington Strategies, and filed an explosive declaration. He accused Qatar, his former million-dollar client, of deliberately covering up documents for evidence discovery, a process in civil proceedings that both sides must honor.
Mr. Allaham’s declaration said, “I have been informed by my attorneys … that a London-based attorney representing Qatar named Osama Abu-Dehays of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman told my attorneys that they could not produce to Broidy any documents and communications that would be embarrassing to Qatar or that would reveal the involvement of Qatar and/or its agents in the hack-and-smear campaign targeting Broidy.”
Mr. Allaham, whose attorneys were funded by Qatar, signed the Aug. 19 declaration, which was filed by Broidy attorney Daniel Benson. A few days later, Mr. Benson removed him as a defendant.
His declaration got the attention of Judge Dabney L. Friedrich, who was appointed to the bench in 2017 by Mr. Trump. As a sovereign nation, Qatar is seeking an exemption from evidence discovery. Its Washington law firm submitted “privilege logs” listing off-limits documents, some to include Mr. Allaham’s messaging in Qatar power circles.
Based on Mr. Allaham’s declaration, Judge Friedrich casts doubt on the truthfulness of Qatari filings, saying its statements to her “may be false or materially misleading.” (Qatar is not a defendant but a Broidy lawsuit target. I emailed the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop and received no reply.)
Mr. Allaham’s flip could provide an unprecedented look at how oil-wealthy Qatar manipulates the corridors of power in Washington — in this case, the demise of Mr. Broidy and his one-man investment shop, Broidy Capital Management in Los Angeles.
“This case is about a criminal conspiracy to retaliate against, discredit, and ultimately silence Mr. Broidy,” his lawsuit says. “It is a stunning, true story of an international criminal racketeering enterprise and tortious conspiracy, funded by Qatar.”
The lawsuit alleges that Qatar and its paid U.S. consultants, the defendants Mr. Muzin, Mr. Allaham and public relations executive Gregory Howard, “unlawfully targeted Mr. Broidy solely because of his successful efforts to call public attention to Qatar’s support of Hamas, al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and a host of other international terrorist organizations.”
Indeed, Mr. Broidy’s condemnation of Qatar influenced Mr. Trump, who, in his first year as president, publicly cited him in discussing Qatar’s links to Islamic terrorist groups.
The lawsuit states that soon afterward, the “Qatari Enterprise,” as Mr. Broidy calls it, arranged through third parties to hack Mr. Broidy’s and his lawyer wife’s computers and servers in early 2018. The stolen emails and documents then made their way to The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, New York Times and other news organizations, the lawsuit says.
Mr. Muzin bragged to Mr. Allaham at one point, “We got the press going after Broidy,” according to messages obtained by Mr. Broidy’s legal team.
Mr. Muzin, a former Republican congressional staffer and Trump campaign aide, also bragged to Mr. Allaham that their orchestrated news stories have “put him in Mueller’s crosshairs.” This was a reference to special counsel Robert Mueller, whose Russia investigation ended the following year.
Mr. Broidy, a multimillionaire venture capitalist, hired a cybersecurity firm, Ankura Consulting, to find out who hacked him. It determined that the intrusion came from virtual private network servers in the U.S. and overseas “that were previously reported to be favored by criminal actors.”
The first email-ignited story appeared March 1, 2018, in The Wall Street Journal. The Journal used emails and documents provided by the “Qatari Enterprise.” The story told of a Broidy plan to earn millions of dollars by persuading the Department of Justice to drop an investigation of a corrupt Malaysian official.
After the story appeared, Mr. Muzin messaged Mr. Allaham, “He’s finished.”
The “Qatari Enterprise” had a ripe target.
Mr. Broidy, who during the Trump presidency was deputy finance chairman for the Republican National Committee, found himself under investigation by the Mueller team for conduct described in his hacked emails.
In October 2020, he pleaded guilty to violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act by failing to register with the Justice Department as an agent for a Malaysian who paid him millions of dollars. The Justice Department said Mr. Broidy used his Trump connections to try unsuccessfully to end an investigation into the Malaysian who stole millions from the country’s sovereign wealth fund.
On the day he left office, Mr. Trump issued a pardon.
Mr. Broidy had relinquished his GOP post after news he paid hush money to a Playboy playmate over a sexual affair.
The “Qatar Enterprise” defense: In court filings, Mr. Muniz says Mr. Broidy twice failed with similar lawsuits in California and New York. A California judge ruled that Mr. Muniz was not implicated in the hacks or the dissemination of stolen materials to the press.
One of the defenses for Mr. Howard, the PR executive, is free speech. Even if he forwarded stolen emails to the press, his lawyer argued, Mr. Howard’s “conversations with reporters on that topic are protected under the First Amendment.”
Mr. Allaham signed a $4.2 million financial settlement with Qatar in December 2018. The settlement, signed by the Qatari Embassy, states that no “Qatar party” ever instructed Mr. Allaham or another person to hack Broidy Capital Management computers.
Today, the big next question is, what is defector Allaham spilling about his work at the threshold of Qatar’s ruling family?
Mr. Allaham says Qatar’s “privilege logs” list his “numerous” WhatsApp instant messages with Ali Al-Thawadi, chief of staff to Mohammed bin Hamad Al Thani, the younger brother of the emir of Qatar.
Correction: Due to an editing error, a previous version of this column mischaracterized the nature of Mr. Broidy’s hush money payment to a former Playboy model.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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