Former Trump Fund-Raiser Drops Suits Over Hack of Emails
U.S. World Business Arts Lifestyle Opinion Audio Games Cooking Wirecutter The Athletic You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. Elliott Broidy had filed lawsuits against a former C.I.A. officer and three lobbyists accusing them of helping Qatar […]
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Elliott Broidy had filed lawsuits against a former C.I.A. officer and three lobbyists accusing them of helping Qatar engineer the theft and distribution of his communications to discredit him.
Elliott Broidy, a California businessman who was once a top fund-raiser for Donald J. Trump, dropped two lawsuits on Monday against people he accused of helping to carry out a hack-and-leak operation that revealed his covert lobbying to shape the Trump administration’s foreign policy.
Mr. Broidy pleaded guilty in 2020 to conspiring to violate foreign lobbying laws on behalf of Chinese and Malaysian interests. Mr. Trump pardoned him in January 2021, just hours before leaving office.
The hack and dissemination of Mr. Broidy’s records in 2018, and the lawsuits that followed, came amid a bitter feud between Qatar and two of its regional rivals — the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia — from whom Mr. Broidy was seeking lucrative defense contracts. From the beginning of the Trump administration, Mr. Broidy lobbied Mr. Trump and his aides to take a harder line against Qatar.
In the lawsuits, Mr. Brody claimed that the Qatari government engineered the hack in an effort to neutralize his criticism of the country for financing groups linked to terrorism.
Who is responsible for the hacking operation remains unclear.
One of the lawsuits was against Kevin Chalker, a former C.I.A. officer who owns a New York-based technology security firm. Mr. Broidy had alleged that Mr. Chalker and his firm, Global Risk Advisors, orchestrated the email hack on behalf of the Qataris.
When Mr. Broidy filed the lawsuit in 2019, the firm had a contract with the Qatari government that Mr. Chalker’s lawyers said focused on providing security for the 2022 World Cup, but Mr. Chalker has long denied he played any role in the email hack. In a statement on Tuesday, he said that the dismissal of the case “marks the end of nearly six years spent fighting to clear my name.”
