Former high-dollar Trump fundraiser Elliott Broidy has long maintained that the Qatari government was behind the hacking of his emails and their distribution to the press. Now, he’s implicating a former senior aide to Jared Kushner, who Broidy says advised a firm that helped orchestrate the hacking campaign while serving in the White House.
Broidy’s new allegation is buried in a 112-page legal filing submitted in a federal court in New York last week, where his legal team is suing the firm Global Risk Advisors over what Broidy, a prominent Qatar critic, describes as the firm’s central role in Doha’s efforts to illegally access and disseminate his private communications.
“Upon information and belief,” Broidy’s legal team alleged in an amended civil complaint filed on Friday, “during the negotiation and implementation of GRA’s broad cybersecurity and surveillance agreement with Qatar, GRA relied upon the advice and feedback of a supposedly former employee who at that time in the summer and fall of 2017 worked in the West Wing of the White House.”
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The filing does not name the White House official in question. But publicly available financial disclosure filings make clear who it’s referring to: the only former GRA employee who has worked in Donald Trump’s West Wing is Ira Greenstein, a New York attorney and former senior aide to Kushner. Two sources who spoke with The Daily Beast, one familiar with GRA’s work and another with Greenstein’s time at the White House, said that he had indeed communicated with the firm while at the White House.
Greenstein’s alleged involvement adds another wrinkle to Broidy’s long-running legal and public relations saga. It also raises questions about Greenstein’s work in the administration. A White House official advising a foreign government’s cybersecurity vendor would raise eyebrows even absent any compensation. And under ethics rules imposed by a Trump executive order early in his term, political appointees are barred from working on specific issues that could directly affect former employers or clients.
Greenstein did not respond to requests for comment on Broidy’s allegations. A spokesperson for Kushner declined to comment.
Broidy’s lawsuit accuses GRA and a handful of top executives, including chief executive Kevin Chalker, of complicity in a cyber-espionage campaign on behalf of the Qatari government against Broidy, his wife, and other critics, including the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the United States.
Reached by email, GRA attorney Orin Snyder flatly denied all of the claims made by Broidy in his lawsuit.
“Since 2018, courts across the country have dismissed Elliott Broidy’s efforts to peddle the lies contained in his latest, revised complaint. The allegations are false,” Snyder wrote. “Mr. Broidy has a well-documented history of dishonesty and reportedly is under criminal investigation for alleged corruption involving foreign leaders in Angola and Romania. This latest filing is a transparent effort to deflect attention away from the fact that the walls are closing in on this disgraced and increasingly desperate man.”
Snyder did not address the more specific allegations regarding Greenstein’s work with GRA.
At the outset of the Trump presidency, Broidy retained significant influence with the new administration, and used that influence to press the Trump administration to take a harder line on Qatar over its support for various transnational terrorist organizations. A longtime GOP donor and fundraiser, Broidy served as the deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee until 2018, when he resigned amid reports of a $1.6 million payment to an alleged mistress.
It was his pressure against Qatar, Broidy alleges, that landed him in Doha’s crosshairs. The theft of his email communications, which were leaked piecemeal to major U.S. publications, was damaging for Broidy, and exposed his attempts to secure contracts from a number of foreign governments. The Justice Department reportedly probed that work, though no charges were filed in the matter.
Broidy, for his part, has pursued his own legal campaign against Qatar, GRA, and public relations consultants who he says were complicit in attempts to use that stolen information to try to implicate him in federal investigations in order to shut down his advocacy efforts.
Broidy was just one of a number of public figures targeted, his lawsuit alleges. He also claims that Qatar-backed hackers went after critics of the country’s hosting of the 2022 World Cup, and also targeted Yousef Al Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the United States. GRA denied those allegations as well in a Thursday story by The Daily Mail. Broidy’s lawsuit also mentions reports of Otaiba’s close relationship with Kushner in particular, making its allusions to Greenstein later in the lawsuit more notable.
Greenstein was a relatively obscure figure inside the White House, where he held the title of deputy assistant to the president and strategist. According to financial disclosure filings with the Office of Government Ethics, he worked at GRA from January 2012 until he joined the White House in February 2017. He served the counsel and chief of staff to the firm’s CEO. He also appears to have returned to GRA after his March 2018 departure from the White House. A public schedule for Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Jay Clayton listed Greenstein as an attendee of a November 2018 meeting, and described him as GRA’s general counsel.
Greenstein initially told federal ethics officials that GRA paid him $175,000 from 2016 through January 2017. He later corrected that statement to say he’d received $75,000 and forfeited another $110,000 in pledged compensation upon accepting his White House position.
GRA describes itself as “an international strategic consultancy specializing in cybersecurity, military and law enforcement training, and intelligence-based advisory services.” The firm employs former U.S. military and intelligence officers, and provides cybersecurity and physical security consulting services to government and private clients.
GRA does not publicly list its clients or detail its work on their behalf. But Broidy alleges a longstanding relationship between the company and the Qatari government, which he says also entailed more run-of-the-mill cybersecurity and consulting. According to Qatari government records, GRA incorporated a subsidiary in the country in October 2017.
