David Sharaz has been spared the ordeal of being cross-examined in the witness box during Linda Reynolds’ defamation case against his pregnant wife, Brittany Higgins.
But while Sharaz will avoid cross-examination in the Western Australian Supreme Court, Higgins will not. He will have to testify under oath for the third time in about two years.
Daily Mail Australia has also learned that Bruce Lehrmann has backed the Liberal senator and offered to act as a witness if needed.
However, it is unclear whether the offer was accepted.
Ms Reynolds is suing her former employee, Ms Higgins, over social media posts she says damaged her reputation in 2023.
She is also suing Sharaz over similar posts published in 2022, but he admitted defeat in April, citing financial difficulties, and it will likely be finalized in August.
The legal action has hit Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz hard, with the couple announcing this week that they were selling their $600,000 French chateau to cover legal costs, which could run into millions.
Other possible witnesses include former Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Liberal Senator Michaelia Cash, who was Higgins’ boss until early 2021.
Pictured: David Sharaz and Brittany Higgins, who are being sued by Senator Linda Reynolds
Senator Linda Reynolds (pictured) is suing Brittany Higgins and David Sharaz for defamation
The social media posts in question revolve around the couple’s allegations that the senator failed to support Higgins after she revealed that Lehrmann had raped her in Reynolds’ office in March 2019.
Ms Higgins has repeatedly claimed that Ms Reynolds and her staff ostracised her in the wake of her assault and that she was ultimately forced to choose between her career and reporting her rape allegations to police.
Ms Reynolds has continually denied failing to support her junior employee.
According to Ms Reynolds’ updated statement of claim, Ms Higgins allegedly “acted maliciously” by making social media posts about how the then-Liberal government handled her rape allegations.
The statement of claim said: ‘They were published in furtherance of a plan by (Ms Higgins) and Mr Sharaz to use the defendant’s allegations of rape and political cover-up… as a weapon to inflict immediate political damage on (Ms Reynolds) and the then government.’
Ms Reynolds further alleged that part of that scheme included arranging meetings with Labour figures such as Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who were allegedly given false information.
Senators were then allegedly encouraged to ask “aggressive questions” during Question Time in February 2021, shortly after Higgins went public with her rape allegations.
The questions were so intense that Ms. Reynolds was later hospitalized.
Text message exchanges were also included in court documents. Mr Sharaz messaged Ms Higgins: ‘Katy is coming to see me with some questions you need to prepare for… she is really involved now.’
Brittany Higgins is pictured with David Sharaz outside court in March, amid a case management hearing in Perth.
During question time on 17 February 2021, Senator Gallagher accused Senator Reynolds of engaging in a “cover-up” by failing to answer questions about whether Ms Higgins was encouraged not to report the alleged rape to police.
“By withholding information, what he is doing is continuing the cover-up that has been going on for two years, which has been the cause of much trauma for Ms Higgins,” Senator Gallagher said at the time.
‘It is often the cover-up that is as traumatic as other elements of a serious crime like this, because it compounds the trauma.
“That means the people she worked for, the people she looked up to and expected to treat her properly, didn’t.”
Ms Reynolds alleged that these “aggressive” questions and the fallout from Ms Higgins’ interview with The Project, which aired that same month, led to her being hospitalised.
In alleging a conspiracy, the statement of claim also refers to several text messages between Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz.
In a message sent in March 2021, Ms Higgins wrote: “He’s about to f*** him (Scott Morrison). Hold on. We got him.”
On March 28, 2021, Mr Sharaz wrote: ‘Suck your f*** Linda… You are a horrible human.’
The matter is scheduled for a four-week hearing on August 2.
Bruce Lehrmann offered to be a witness for Linda Reynolds, but the offer was declined.
In April this year, Federal Court Judge Michael Lee found on a balance of probabilities that Lehrmann raped Ms Higgins in Ms Reynolds’ ministerial suite in Parliament House in 2019.
Mr Lehrmann has filed an appeal, the first case management hearing for which is scheduled for Thursday in the Federal Court.
During Lehrmann’s defamation trial against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson in December last year, Judge Lee could not understand why Sharaz was not called as a witness.
At one point, he compared Sharaz to the prophet Elijah, noting: “There is a place for him at the Passover table, but he never appears.”
Judge Lee found no evidence of the political “cover-up narrative” he said was pushed by Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz “from the outset” of their decision to speak to Wilkinson on The Project in February 2021.
The judge also found that Ms Higgins only began to hint at a political conspiracy when she met Sharaz in 2020, a year after her assault.
He pointed to Mr Sharaz as the turning point when Ms Higgins’ story moved from rape allegations to a broader conspiracy theory.
Shortly after the ruling, Ms Reynolds told the Daily Mail Australia that it “would be an understatement” to say she was satisfied with Judge Lee’s ruling, describing the whole affair as a “cover-up that never existed”.
“For three years I have endured intense public scrutiny, defamation, vile ridicule and being demonized as the villain of a political cover-up story that I always knew was false,” she said.
Ms Reynolds said she was “committed to fully vindicating” her reputation following Judge Lee’s landmark finding.
