Brittany Higgins texted a reporter about her former boss Linda Reynolds after she went public with her rape allegations, saying, “I don’t think she should resign.”
Senator Reynolds is suing her former staffer for defamation in the Washington Supreme Court over social media posts in 2023 that she says were part of an orchestrated plot to bring her and the Liberal government down.
But on Tuesday, as Reynolds appeared in court for the first time since giving evidence last month, texts between Higgins and News Corp political journalist Samantha Maiden were read out.
The texts were sent around February 2021, when Ms Higgins first went public with her allegations that she was raped by a colleague on a sofa in Senator Reynolds’ ministerial suite inside Parliament House in 2019.
Rachael Young SC, counsel for the former staffer, told the court on Tuesday that Ms Maiden had asked Ms Higgins if she thought the senator should resign.
Ms Higgins replied: “Off the record, I don’t think so.”
Ms Young argued the message reflected her client’s honest thinking at the time and was inconsistent with Reynolds’s allegations that he wanted to destroy the Liberal Party.
The lawyer said Ms Higgins’ only motivation was to shed light on her assault and ensure her ordeal did not happen to anyone else.
Brittany Higgins is photographed outside the Washington Supreme Court in March.
Linda Reynolds (pictured last week) is suing Ms Higgins for defamation over social media posts.
He also told the court that Ms Higgins campaigned for the Liberal Party in the weeks after her rape in 2019, and is pictured looking “elated” when then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison was re-elected.
“Ms Higgins, a junior staffer with a long association with the Liberal Party, has campaigned for them and described Mr Morrison’s victory as absolute euphoria,” Ms Young said in her closing arguments.
‘The alleged plan is that she wanted to overthrow her senator and that government, we say that that will not be found.’
Ms Higgins’ rape allegations were first made public by Ms Maiden in February 2021.
Those same claims were also aired in an interview on Network Ten’s The Project, which was highly critical of the way Reynolds and her staff handled Higgins’ rape.
The week after the story was published, Ms Reynolds was subjected to intense questioning during Senate Question Time and later collapsed and was rushed to hospital with a heart problem.
During the current defamation action, Ms Reynolds told the court she believed the intense scrutiny was part of a plan by Ms Higgins and her husband, David Sharaz, to destroy her reputation.
Linda Reynolds is photographed with one of her attorneys outside the Supreme Court in Washington in August.
Brittany Higgins’ barrister Rachael Young SC is pictured, right, outside court in August.
Earlier, Ms Young told the court that Ms Reynolds had focused on the “wrong target”.
She said Ms Higgins’ sole aim in going public with her rape allegations was to push for reforms to the way Parliament handles complaints.
“She sought radical reforms to the Personnel Act and the way staff were treated in Parliament,” Ms Young told the court.
“As he told Samantha Maiden, it would have been easier to do nothing.”
Ms Young said Ms Reynolds should not be considered a reliable witness and that her testimony was problematic, unreliable and self-serving.
He said evidence presented to the court identified the senator’s pain, distress and loss of reputation as having occurred in 2021, when Higgins’ rape allegations were first publicised.
The senator is suing Higgins and her husband, David Sharaz, over social media posts published two years after those stories were published.
The trial continues.