Brittany Higgins’ husband David Sharaz fires off an angry message to a Women in Media event hosting Justice Michael Lee

Brittany Higgins’ husband, David Sharaz, has demanded whether a Federal Court judge will mention Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case during a talk at a $495-a-head event.

Judge Michael Lee accepted an invitation to participate in a “candid conversation” with former ABC chairman Ita Buttrose at a national Women in Media conference on August 9.

According to the website, the session promises to provide “in-depth insights” at the intersection of media and law, “with particular attention to themes such as truth and trust.”

“Judge Michael Lee, known for his astute handling of complex legal cases, and Ita Buttrose… will examine critical issues affecting both the media and the judicial landscape,” the ad read.

However, Mr Sharaz seemed concerned that the focus of the event would be on Lehrmann’s high-profile defamation case in December, over which Judge Lee presided.

Mr Sharaz was criticized in Judge Lee’s ruling.

Judge Michael Lee is pictured delivering his verdict in the defamation trial against Bruce Lehrmann

According to The Australian, Sharaz sent an angry message to organizers, asking: “So he doesn’t want to discuss the Lehrmann case, which is what he made his name for and what you’re booking him for?”

Women in Media told Mr Sharaz that Judge Lee would discuss the intersection of media, law and society, and there was no expectation that he would speak specifically about the Lehrmann case.

In April, Judge Lee announced his findings in Lehrmann’s defamation case against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson.

He concluded, on the balance of probabilities, that Lehrmann raped his former colleague Ms Higgins in Parliament House in 2019, in much the same way as she described in an interview with Wilkinson for The Project in 2021.

In his judgment, Judge Lee found that Mr Sharaz had amplified “a conspiratorial and political theme” in Ms Higgins’ rape claims.

“The formulation of the key aspects of this claim began shortly before Ms Higgins’ friend, Mr Sharaz, made the necessary arrangements for Ms Higgins to tell her story,” the judgment said.

During the event, Judge Lee will be in conversation with former ABC chairman Ita Buttrose (pictured)

In January 2020, Mr Sharaz sent Wilkinson an email with the striking title ‘Me Too, Liberal Party, Project Pitch’ and immediately started telling her about a government conspiracy.

He wrote: ‘I have a sensitive story involving a sexual assault in Parliament House; a woman who was pressured by the Liberal Party and a female minister not to pursue this. She asked me to tell the story this year.’

He then sent her the timeline in an email titled “everything you need,” with another conspiracy claim.

“I’m sending this on behalf of Britt purely because, and this sounds paranoid, we just don’t know who is keeping a close eye on her,” he wrote.

Wilkinson later called the situation an “extraordinary cover-up” involving Ms Higgins’ former parliamentary bosses, Senators Linda Reynolds and Michaelia Cash.

Mr. Sharaz chose Wilkinson as one of two journalists to whom Ms. Higgins was to tell her story and became a conduit between them, even co-writing a timeline of her attack that could be deployed to the press gallery.

Judge Lee did not accept Ms Higgins’ evidence that she wrote the document alone, partly because there were points where she was referred to in the third person.