Qatar hack emails

GOP fundraiser: Ex-American spy helped Qatar hack emails

The allegation is part of a unique lawsuit attempting to hold a foreign government accountable in a U.S. court for digital espionage operations.

By JOSH MEYER

A top fundraiser for President Donald Trump has accused the Persian Gulf state of Qatar of conspiring with former American and British spies to hack and publicize his emails as part of a clandestine state-sponsored influence operation on U.S. soil.

In a new court filing, Elliott Broidy — who has faced scrutiny over his efforts to convince Trump and the U.S. government to adopt an aggressive stance against Qatar — alleges that former U.S.- and U.K.-trained intelligence operatives helped orchestrate cyberattacks on American citizens in an attempt to discredit their public standing.

Thursday’s court filing was prompted by new information about how Qatar used a private intelligence firm, Global Risk Advisors, to “coordinate and implement the hack,” and to recruit “cyber mercenaries” in various countries to execute the technical aspects of it, a lawyer for Broidy and his Broidy Capital Management firm told POLITICO.

“The amended complaint filed today reflects our more advanced knowledge of the conspiracy against Mr. Broidy and seeks to hold responsible persons and entities accountable,” said lawyer Lee Wolosky of the firm Boies Schiller Flexner, LLP. That includes “former U.S. and U.K. government personnel,” he said.

Wolosky, a former ambassador and senior counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations, said it is a crime for anyone to hack into the emails of a U.S. citizen. But it is tantamount to “an act of war,” he said, “when such an attack is orchestrated by a foreign government.”

“In this lawsuit, we are asking that Qatar be held accountable for its support of terrorism in any form — offline or online,” Wolosky said. “When foreign sovereigns are alleged to have committed crimes, sovereign immunity principles should not shield them from accountability in our courts.”

The amended complaint is part of a lawsuit Broidy has been pressing against the Qatari government since March in a California federal court. The suit accuses Qatar of hacking Broidy’s emails and funneling them to reporters through Republican operative Nick Muzin in order to neutralize Broidy’s effectiveness as an anti-Qatar influence on the Trump White House.

Several outlets — including the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal and the Hollywood Reporter — have published articles based on Broidy’s stolen emails. Broidy recently subpoenaed the AP for information about the source of the hacked emails.

Broidy’s suit is one of the first attempts to hold a foreign government accountable in an American court for digital espionage operations.

Qatar has strenuously denied Broidy’s allegations, describing them in a statement issued Thursday by its embassy in Washington as being “completely fabricated and without merit.”

In Broidy’s latest filing, the Republican fundraiser expands his original lawsuit to also name Mohammad bin Hamad Khalifa al Thani, the brother of Qatar’s current head of state, and Ahmed al-Rumaihi, a U.S.-based Qatari operative who managed a $100 billion investment fund on behalf of the country's government.

The fund has become embroiled in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian election meddling investigation as it expands to look at whether other countries sought to buy influence. Broidy has also drawn the interest of investigators because of his relationship with Trump, though a source close to Broidy denied Thursday that he is a person of interest in Mueller’s probe.

The lawsuit is part of a larger battle between Qatar and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that escalated dramatically last June, when the two Gulf nations imposed a blockade on Qatar to isolate it from land and sea commerce. Trump publicly backed the blockade, accusing Qatar of supporting terrorism and crediting Broidy with influencing his policy. Qatar was also hit with international sanctions.

In response, the Qatari government — through al Thani and al-Rumaihi, the two Qatari’s named in Thursday's filing — moved aggressively to improve its standing with the White House, according to the amended suit. The filing includes allegations about how Qatar tried to influence U.S. policy by using unregistered lobbyists, and by trying to buy a significant part of a conservative media website, Newsmax, favored by Trump and run by his friend Christopher Ruddy.

But the new filing also fills out the alleged details of the hacking campaign against Broidy. It claims that Qatar used Global Risk Advisors, LLC and its principals, Kevin Chalker and David Mark Powell, to coordinate the attack against him.

The document says Chalker is a former CIA cyber operative who runs GRA’s New York operations, and that Powell is a former British intelligence operative who opened the firm’s Qatar office in October 2017 — just weeks before the hacking campaign began.

Chalker, Powell and GRA, it alleges, “made it clear within that community that they had been retained to conduct or coordinate offensive cyber operations on behalf of Defendant State of Qatar.”

GRA did not respond to an email seeking comment on Thursday. Chalker and Powell could not be contacted for comment.

A spokesman for Al-Rumaihi also said the allegations were "completely meritless," and said he was no longer working for, or on behalf of, the Qatari government at the time in question.