Derek Utley filed a lawsuit on Monday accusing former Trump aide Alex Bruesewitz of taking $500,000 from Qatari interests. The suit claims these payments could violate the Foreign Agent Registration Act. Bruesewitz denied the claims, and his lawyer said the allegations were "flaccid and defamatory" as the legal battle started.

The suit claims that any payments to Alex Bruesewitz, a Republican strategist, could have violated the Foreign Agent Registration Act. He has denied ever taking such funds.

Dueling accusations between founders of a digital strategy firm that runs several social media accounts for President Trump escalated sharply on Monday, when one of the founders accused the other of failing to disclose taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from interests in Qatar.

In a lawsuit filed on Monday, one co-founder, Derek Utley, accused his former partner, Alex Bruesewitz, of being paid approximately $500,000 by "individuals associated with Qatar" for what he described as "an undisclosed business or consulting arrangement."

Mr. Utley said Mr. Bruesewitz, who worked as an aide to Mr. Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, had cultivated relationships and offered political consulting services to numerous individuals and business interests outside the United States.

According to Mr. Utley, the alleged Qatari payments could violate the Foreign Agent Registration Act, or FARA, which requires anyone who attempts to influence the U.S. government for the interest of a foreign entity to register those activities with the Justice Department. Neither Mr. Bruesewitz nor any of his companies appear in the department's list of entities registered under the act.

Bradford Cohen, a lawyer for Mr. Bruesewitz, said the claims were untrue, calling them "flaccid and defamatory." He added that Mr. Utley "can expect us to vigorously fight them in court." Mr. Bruesewitz had also said in a post on X on Saturday, before the lawsuit was filed, that he "never accepted money from foreign governments or companies."

The lawsuit, filed in the West Palm Beach, Fla., division of U.S. District Court, is the latest back-and-forth between Mr. Utley and Mr. Bruesewitz, who have each accused the other in separate lawsuits of mishandling money from X Strategies, the digital strategy firm they co-founded in 2017. Mr. Utley left the firm earlier this year.

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