Reuters
Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy sued Qatar on Monday, accusing the Middle East emirate of trying to discredit him by stealing and leaking emails that detailed his contacts with the Trump administration and Persian Gulf rival, the United Arab Emirates.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, adds another layer of intrigue to a complicated narrative that has connected a Middle East dispute to Republican fundraisers, the Trump White House and special counsel Robert Mueller’s examination of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Last year, the U.A.E. joined with Saudi Arabia to accuse Qatar, the tiny Persian Gulf emirate, of financing extremists, and then cut ties with the country. President Donald Trump, who sided with the Arab countries against Qatar, claimed in June that Saudi Arabia and others’ decision to cut ties was evidence of the success of his visit to the region in May, when the president encouraged regional powers to crack down on support for extremist groups.
According to Broidy’s lawsuit, Qatar’s representatives identified him as an impediment to their plan to improve the country’s standing in Washington, and developed an effort to discredit him. The lawsuit is filed against the state of Qatar and one of the country’s Washington-based lobbyists, Nick Muzin, of Stonington Strategies. Emails and other documents hacked from Broidy and his wife, Robin Rosenzweig, and provided to news outlets in the past month showed that Brody spoke to the White House and Trump about issues of interest to the U.A.E., and relayed information from those meetings to George Nader, an adviser to the U.A.E. and an associate of Broidy who, according to the emails, was also his conduit to the U.A.E.’s leadership.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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