A group of Australian federal police officers have launched a defamation case against the ACT government in relation to Shane Drumgold’s complaint about their handling of the Bruce Lehrmann prosecution.
In December 2022 Guardian Australia revealed that Drumgold, then the director of public prosecutions, had complained that officers engaged in “a very clear campaign to pressure” him not to prosecute the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins, saying there was “inappropriate interference” and he felt investigators “clearly aligned with the successful defence of this matter” during the trial.
Drumgold sent the letter to the ACT police chief on 1 November 2022, just after the collapse of the Lehrmann trial, at which the former Liberal staffer pleaded innocent to the alleged rape.
Lehrmann was not convicted at the trial, abandoned due to juror misconduct, but was found by a federal court judge in April on the balance of probabilities to have raped Higgins on minister Linda Reynold’s couch in Parliament House in 2019.
In the letter, Drumgold, who resigned in August 2023, warned that he believed there had been “some quite clear investigator interference in the criminal justice process”.
A group of AFP officers sent concerns notices related to the letter several months ago. On Friday the AFP officers, including Det Insp Marcus Boorman, lodged defamation proceedings in the ACT registry of the federal court.
Guardian Australia understands that Drumgold’s position in relation to the litigation is that he has immunity to the suit under the Director of Public Prosecutions Act.
An ACT government spokesperson said it “understands that proceedings have been commenced in the federal court by members of the AFP in respect of what they allege to be defamatory statements by the former [DPP]” but it had not yet been served legal papers.
“Having regard to the fact that those proceedings are now apparently on foot, it would not be appropriate for the Territory to comment on those proceedings or how it intends to respond.”
Reynolds has already received a $90,000 settlement and an apology from the ACT government in relation to the Drumgold letter.
The letter helped spark an inquiry by former judge Walter Sofronoff KC to investigate Drumgold’s allegations and the relationship between the DPP and AFP.
Drumgold told the inquiry a police and political conspiracy over the Lehrmann prosecution was “possible, if not probable”. Drumgold later clarified he no longer held those views.
Lehrmann’s barrister, Steven Whybrow, told the inquiry that Boorman had threatened to resign if Lehrmann were found guilty.
Whybrow claimed Boorman expressed to him while the jury was deliberating that he was “was quite distressed about this prosecution and considered that Mr Lehrmann was innocent”.
In his report, Sofronoff found that Drumgold “advanced nothing resembling evidence to support the serious allegations of impropriety that he levelled [in the letter] against the police, defence and senator Reynolds”.
“He was relying upon ‘perceptions, suspicions, or concerns’.”
“Allegations of corruption are extremely serious and, without a proper basis, are defamatory.”
Drumgold launched a challenge to the Sofronoff inquiry report in the ACT supreme court, arguing that the inquiry breached the law through the alleged unauthorised disclosure of material, and that he was denied natural justice due to “a reasonable apprehension of bias”.
In March justice Stephen Kaye agreed that Sofronoff’s extensive communications with a columnist at The Australian newspaper gave rise to an impression of bias against Drumgold.
Drumgold had attempted to overturn eight of Sofronoff’s “serious findings of misconduct” against him, but was only successful in striking off one: that he had acted with “grossly unethical conduct” in his cross-examination of Reynolds.
Before publication of the report, Sofronoff put to Drumgold that the letter had defamed Reynolds. Drumgold responded that this was beyond the scope of the inquiry and “without any proper basis or foundation”.
Defamatory imputations had not been particularised nor had he been asked to advance “positive defence in response to any allegation of defamation”.
“Drumgold denies that the concerns expressed by him about senator Reynold’s conduct were defamatory,” Drumgold’s lawyer’s said.
“At the very least, the concerns identified by him with respect to senator Reynolds were substantially true and the concerns that he expressed in the 1 November letter were solidly based on factual information from reliable sources.”
As part of the settlement with Reynolds, the director general of the ACT government’s justice and community safety director accepted “that the allegations contained in the letter have been found by the Board of Inquiry to be defamatory of Senator Reynolds” and “unreservedly” retracted those allegations.
The director general “sincerely [apologised] for the damage, distress and embarrassment it has caused to senator Reynolds”.
Guardian Australia contacted the ACT government, and lawyers for Boorman and Drumgold for comment.
