Did Elliott Broidy stop paying Shera Bechard because those payments were an ongoing bribe of Donald Trump and his new (actually old) criminal defense lawyer told him to stop making them?

My theory, which is mine:

Broidy’s lawyer in this matter, Chris Clark of Latham & Watkins, is claiming the agreement is “null and void” because Bechard’s former lawyer, Keith Davidson (who also represented Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, and who has been fired by all three women because they independently concluded that he was colluding with Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen) improperly disclosed aspects of the NDA to Daniels’ current lawyer, Michael Avenatti.

There are several reasons why this argument doesn’t appear to make any sense:

• Even if Davidson improperly disclosed information to Avenatti (he denies doing so), such a disclosure wouldn’t be legal grounds for voiding the agreement between Broidy and Bechard. Broidy’s remedy in this situation would be to sue Davidson for damages, not to unilaterally cancel his agreement with Bechard. After all, there’s no allegation that Bechard violated the agreement, and, at the time Davidson allegedly did so, he wasn’t even Bechard’s lawyer any more.

• If Broidy is doing this to try to save money, he’s making a very odd calculation. He still owes $1.2 million to Bechard, which certainly isn’t a trivial sum, even for someone as rich as he appears to be. But using Latham & Watkins to litigate the matter (disclosure: I was once an associate at this firm) would surely eliminate a great deal if not all of any potential savings from not going through with the agreement, even assuming – which at the moment seems highly optimistic – that Broidy would eventually prevail on the merits.

• Chris Clark is a white collar criminal defense lawyer. Indeed, Broidy employed Clark when he was prosecuted a decade ago for bribing officials in the New York State Comptroller’s office (Clark worked out a plea deal, in which Broidy testified against seven officials in exchange for pleading guilty to a single felony charge). Why is Broidy using a criminal defense specialist to litigate a contract dispute? One possibility here is that Broidy is backing out of the contract on Clark’s advice, because the NDA is actually a bribe to Trump, and, by not paying the rest of that bribe, Clark’s client would be lessening his criminal liability.

• By claiming that their agreement is void, Broidy is putting Bechard in a position to tell her story – whatever it may actually be – in whatever forum she likes.

I suspect this last point contains a key to understanding why Broidy is trying to back out of the agreement now.  Perhaps like so many other people, Broidy has concluded that Donald Trump is a bad business partner.

This would be a good place to note that over the past few months I’ve gotten quite a bit of help in this matter from Gregg Polsky, who originally suggested to me that the Broidy-Bechard story as told to the Wall Street Journal made no sense, and who has provided invaluable feedback all along as I’ve worked on it, as I’m sure the NSA can attest. (Kidding, probably).

As long as I’m naming names, what I believe is the key insight in the story above — the bolded quote suggesting precisely why Broidy stopped paying Bechard — was given to me by my colleague Jennifer Hendricks.