A top fundraiser for President Trump, Elliot Broidy, is blaming the hack of his emails — which sought to promote an anti-Qatar agenda in the White House — on a former CIA operative, NBC News reported Thursday.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court Thursday, Broidy claims that former operative Kevin Chalker and his partner at Global Risk Advisors, David Mark Powell, are behind the leaks of his emails to the U.S. media because the pair opened an office in Doha in October 2017 — two months before the emails were leaked, according to NBC’s review of the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges the two worked with the brother of the emir of Qatar to obtain the emails, many of which were published by the Associated Press this week. The AP’s investigation shows that while Broidy was pushing a pro-United Arab Emirates and an anti-Qatar agenda in the White House, he was also offered hundreds of millions of dollars in defense contracts with the United Arab Emirates.
The AP also found that Broidy, along with Lebanese-American businessman George Nadar, was behind several key actions within the Trump White House: the firing of former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal.
Read NBC’s full story here.
