David Sharaz’s great escape: How Brittany Higgins’ husband has avoided a moment of sheer dread – as Bruce Lehrmann drops a bombshell

David Sharaz has been spared the ordeal of being questioned on the witness stand in Linda Reynolds’ defamation case against his pregnant wife, Brittany Higgins.

But while Mr Sharaz will avoid cross-examination in the WA Supreme Court, Ms Higgins will not. She will have to give evidence under oath for the third time in about two years.

Daily Mail Australia has also learned that Bruce Lehrmann is supporting the Liberal senator and is offering himself as a witness if required.

However, it is unclear whether that offer was accepted.

Ms Reynolds is suing her former employee Ms Higgins over social media posts she claims damaged her reputation in 2023.

She is also suing Mr Sharaz over similar posts published in 2022. In April, he conceded defeat, citing financial problems as the reason. The case is expected to be concluded in August.

The legal action has had a major impact on Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz. This week, the pair announced they are selling their $600,000 French chateau to cover legal costs, which could run into the millions.

Other possible witnesses include former Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Liberal Party Senator Michaelia Cash, who was Higgins’ boss until early 2021.

The social media posts in question revolve around allegations by the couple that the senator did not support Ms Higgins after she revealed she was raped by Lehrmann in Ms Reynolds’ office in March 2019.

Ms Higgins has repeatedly claimed that she was ostracised by Ms Reynolds and her staff following her attack, and that she was ultimately forced to choose between her career and reporting her rape allegations to police.

Ms Reynolds has consistently denied that she failed to support her junior staff member.

Ms Reynolds’ updated complaint alleges that Ms Higgins “acted maliciously” by posting on social media about the way her rape allegations had been handled by the then Liberal government.

The summons stated: ‘They were published in furtherance of a plan of the [Ms Higgins] and Mr. Sharaz to use the suspect’s allegations of rape and the political cover-up… as a weapon to inflict immediate political damage on [Ms Reynolds] and the government of the time.’

Ms Reynolds further alleged that part of that plan included arranging meetings with Labor figures such as Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who were allegedly fed false information.

The senators were then allegedly encouraged to ask “aggressive questions” during Question Time in February 2021, shortly after Ms Higgins went public with her rape allegations.

The questions were so intense that Mrs. Reynolds was later hospitalized.

The text message exchange was also recorded in the court documents. Mr Sharaz sent Ms Higgins the following message: ‘Katy is coming to me with some questions that you need to be prepared for… she is really involved now.’

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, she is continuing a cover-up that has been going on for two years and has caused Ms Higgins great trauma,” Senator Gallagher said at the time.

‘It is often the cover-up that is as traumatic as other aspects of a serious crime like this, because it compounds the trauma.

“It means that the people she worked for, the people she looked up to and expected to treat her well, didn’t do that.”

Ms Reynolds claimed that these “aggressive” questions and the aftermath of Ms Higgins’ interview with The Project, which aired that same month, led to her being hospitalised.

In addition to alleging a conspiracy, the indictment also refers to several text messages between Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz.

In a message sent in March 2021, Ms Higgins wrote: ‘He is [Scott Morrison] is about to get screwed. Just you wait. We’ve got him.’

On March 28, 2021, Mr. Sharaz wrote: ‘Suck shit Linda… You horrible human being.’

The case will last four weeks and will be heard on August 2.

In April this year, Federal Court Judge Michael Lee found on a balance of probabilities that Lehrmann had raped Ms Higgins in Ms Reynolds’ ministerial suite in Parliament House in 2019.

Mr Lehrmann has filed an appeal and the first hearing on the case is scheduled for Thursday in Federal Court.

During Lehrmann’s defamation trial against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson in December last year, Judge Lee could not understand why Mr Sharaz had not been called as a witness.

At one point he compared Mr. Sharaz to the prophet Elijah. He said, “There is a place for him at the Passover table, but he never shows up.”

Judge Lee found no evidence to support the political “cover-up narrative” he said was promoted by Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz “from the very first moment” of their decision to speak to Wilkinson about The Project in February 2021.

The judge also found that Ms Higgins only began hinting at a political conspiracy when she met Mr Sharaz in 2020, a year after her attack.

He credited Mr Sharaz as the turning point when Ms Higgins’ story moved from rape allegations to a broader conspiracy theory.

Shortly after the verdict, Ms Reynolds told Daily Mail Australia that to say she was pleased with Judge Lee’s ruling would be an “understatement”, describing the whole affair as “the cover-up that never was”.

“For three years I have endured intense public scrutiny, vilification, vile trolling, and being demonized as the villain in a political cover-up story that I always knew was untrue,” she said.

Ms Reynolds said she was “determined to fully defend her reputation” following Judge Lee’s ground-breaking finding.