GOP fundraiser: Qatar hacked my email

A top GOP fundraiser is accusing Qatar of hacking his email and planting news about him in American media outlets.

The New York Times reported Monday that Elliott Broidy, a deputy finance chairman for the Republican National Committee, blames Qatar for passing apparently hacked emails to U.S. news outlets. 

Qatar has denied the allegations, however, and accused Broidy of using a “diversionary tactic to distract from the serious allegations against himself and his client, the United Arab Emirates [UAE].”

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Broidy’s company, Circinus, has hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with the UAE.

Broidy reportedly sent a letter to Sheikh Meshal bin Hamad al-Thani, the Qatari ambassador to the U.S., over the weekend, in which he blamed Doha for using “hostile intelligence operations against United States citizens.”

“Your government’s actions against U.S. citizens will certainly jeopardize your nation’s relationship with the United States at a sensitive and costly political time,” he wrote, according to the Times.

The Times reported over the weekend that special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of investigators is looking into whether an adviser to the de facto leader of the UAE has influenced White House policymaking.

That article raised questions about possible Emirati efforts to influence the White House.