- Bruce Lehrmann demands apology for being called ‘cunning’
- Linda Reynolds has received a legal letter
Bruce Lehrmann has lashed out at Linda Reynolds for describing him as “sneaky” during her defamation case against Brittany Higgins, which her lawyer described as a “Jerry Springer shit show.”
Senator Reynolds is suing her former staffer, Ms Higgins, over social media posts in 2022 and 2023 that allegedly implied she was not supportive of the young Liberal staffer after Lehrmann raped her in 2019.
Ms Reynolds has long maintained she tried to help Ms Higgins and claims her posts damaged her reputation.
The four-week hearing in the Western Australian Supreme Court began on Friday with Ms Reynolds’ lawyer, Martin Bennett, giving opening statements.
He said Ms Reynolds “had wonderful intuition… she thought Lehrmann was a shrewd guy”.
On Tuesday, Ms Reynolds’ team received a legal letter from Lehrmann’s lawyer, Zali Burrows, claiming that the term “shady” implied he was “a deceitful, corrupt, fraudulent and dishonest character”.
In the letter, the term ‘shifty’ was described as a ‘character assassination’.
Lehrmann had previously offered his services as a witness to assist Ms Reynolds’ case, but that relationship appears to have fractured beyond repair: he has now demanded a public apology.
Pictured: Linda Reynolds with Bruce Lehrmann, right, at the Invictus Games in Sydney in 2018
Linda Reynolds, pictured left, arrives at court on Monday with her lawyers. Martin Bennett stands with Ms Reynolds
According to the letter, Ms Reynolds had not described Lehrmann as “suspicious” before the current defamation proceedings.
On Monday, Ms Reynolds gave evidence in court saying Lehrmann had lied about his connections to former ASIO Director-General Duncan Lewis.
The senator told the court that she and her chief of staff, Fiona Brown, had reservations about Lehrmann’s future in the ministerial wing because of “his behaviour and the strange things he said”.
‘Some people brag about things or people they know or things they do, and it was things like that that we were concerned about.’
Speaking about Lehrmann’s apparent connection to Mr Lewis, Ms Reynolds said it was “not implausible” because he had dealings with national security officials during his time working in Attorney General George Brandis’s office.
She went on to say: ‘Fiona knows (Mr Lewis) so she contacted him directly and he’d never heard of Bruce so that wasn’t true.’
The letter said: “Lehrmann denies ever claiming to be a ‘friend’ of Mr Lewis, but in fact had had many previous dealings with him and found him pleasant and friendly.”
Bruce Lehrmann, second from left, is pictured with Linda Reynolds, third from right in the back row, when she was sworn in as defence industry minister in 2019.
Brittany Higgins is pictured dressed in blue, arriving at the Western Australian Supreme Court for mediation in March.
Lehrmann’s legal team expressed concern that Ms. Reynolds would continue to make unfavorable personal smears against him.
“He does not wish to be a part of this chaotic state of affairs (colloquially known as the ‘Jerry Springer shit show’), especially under circumstances that give him no right to respond,” the letter reads.
Ms Reynolds was asked to issue a public apology on X and Instagram.
He was also asked to clarify that Lehrmann “did not claim to be a friend of Mr Lewis”.
In April, Federal Court Judge Michael Lee found on a balance of probabilities that Lehrmann raped Ms Higgins on a sofa inside Ms Reynolds’ defence suite in Parliament House in March 2019.
At the time, Ms Higgins and Lehrmann were political staffers of Ms Reynolds, who was defence industry minister.
Lehrmann has long maintained that he did not rape Ms. Higgins.
In May, he filed an appeal to overturn Judge Lee’s findings with Ms. Burrows as his instructing attorney.
