Former Republican fundraiser Elliot Broidy drops his legal suit against Qatar over hack of his emails
Top GOP donor and former Trump ally Elliot Broidy 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.
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 2020, Broidy filed a legal complaint against a cybersecurity firm Global Risk Advisors (GRA) run by ex-CIA agents, claiming Qatar paid them $100million to hack his emails and the communications of other American citizens as part of a years-long campaign of spying and blackmail.
Global Risk Advisors an American intelligence company run by ex-CIA operatives Kevin Chalker and his partner at GRA David Mark Powell opened an office in Doha.
In earlier, Broidy created two fake news sites Qaterexposed.com and BoycottQatarnow.com to spread the disinformation.
The Qatar- based travel company, Mosafer, files a lawsuit claiming Broidy created a ‘disinformation campaign’, using fake news to scare off Americans from visiting or supporting Qatar and also violating FARA and other reporting obligations. This lawsuit file in this month claiming Broidy’s UAE-funded scheme with Trump campaign adviser George Nader that broke lobbying laws designed to prevent foreign influence on government officials.
It is clear from the above that Middle Eastern countries like UAE, Qatar are taking help from foreign actors to conduct smear campaign against their adversaries.
