A top attorney behind MAGA’s rabid crusade to have Hunter Biden jailed for breaching foreign influence laws was working for an authoritarian foreign government at the same time.
Ted Kittila—a Delaware-based lawyer who previously ran on a GOP ticket for state attorney general and seats in the state’s House and Senate—served as legal counsel to the House Ways and Means Committee’s years-long probe of the Biden family. As part of those efforts, he lobbied for the courts to review explosive Republican claims that the son of former President Joe Biden may have peddled the influence of foreign actors on American soil.
Now, the Daily Beast can reveal that Kittila also worked on behalf of foreign actors on a secretive New York lawsuit.
The suit was brought against a U.S. firm by an agent of the Kurdistan regional government in northern Iraq. It accused the American company of failing to deliver on a contract for sinister high-tech surveillance software.
Authorities in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq—ruled by Prime Minister Masrour Barzani and President Nerchivan Barzani, son and nephew, respectively, of the region’s former president—have faced repeated accusations of human rights abuses, including attacks on journalists, activists, and political dissidents.
The specific type of spyware sought by the Barzani regime, known as “zero-click” software, enables users to remotely access devices without requiring any action from the target, such as clicking on a harmful link. It had gained notoriety in 2021 following a series of journalistic exposés on Israeli firm NSO Group’s sale of Pegasus spyware to malicious actors around the world, whose victims included heads of state in France, South Africa, Pakistan, Egypt, and Morocco.
In a further twist, Kittila’s work on the secretive Kurdistan lawsuit came as he pursued a still-ongoing, separate case against the U.S. government, brought by nonprofit Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability, in which he accused the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency of spying on American citizens, and called for greater transparency on domestic surveillance operations.
President Donald Trump’s first impeachment in 2019 stemmed from his alleged efforts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating Hunter Biden’s business dealings in the Eastern European country. Trump and his allies claimed the younger Biden had engaged in corruption while serving on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, while Joe Biden was serving as vice president under President Barack Obama.
After the Republican-controlled Senate acquitted Trump on charges of abusing his presidential powers and obstruction of Congress, the House Ways and Means Committee later launched an investigation into the Biden family to further probe those allegations and other claims of wrongdoing against Hunter Biden.
Kittila first made national headlines in July 2023 when he filed a brief at a federal court in Delaware, where Hunter Biden’s plea deal on federal tax and gun charges was then under review. He was acting on behalf of Rep. Jason Smith, the Republican chairman of the committee, who alleged the Biden family had made “millions of dollars as a result of Hunter Biden’s foreign influence peddling and the selling of the Biden brand.”
In his brief, Kittila argued Biden’s plea deal was suspicious because there was “unprecedented and unusual interference, delays and roadblocks” at the Justice Department that “appear to have hindered the investigation” into his tax affairs. He argued the plea negotiations may therefore have been “tainted by improper conduct at various levels of the government.”
As evidence of those claims, Kittila attached testimony from two IRS whistleblowers who’d told the committee they’d seen evidence Biden may have violated U.S. laws on foreign influence, but “were precluded from doing anything” by their superiors. The deal, under which Biden would have pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor tax offenses in exchange for a likely probationary sentence, unraveled as a result.
It was only the day after Kittila submitted his brief in the Delaware proceedings against Biden that his complaint on behalf of the Barzani regime was filed in New York. While the docket for the Kurdistan lawsuit remains under seal, the Daily Beast obtained a public copy of that document from an online service providing open access to U.S. court records.
According to the complaint, an agent of the Barzani regime tried to purchase zero-click spyware worth around $11 million from a U.S. cybersecurity firm in late 2022, a year after the Pegasus scandal first broke. But the firm failed to prove its system’s effectiveness at a scheduled demonstration, so the agent sued after the company refused to refund his $360,000 deposit.
Kittila successfully urged the court against publicly naming the foreign government on whose behalf the agent had sought the software, because doing so would “irreparably harm” them by “reducing the utility of the system or similar technology if acquired in future,” as well as advertising any “weaknesses in [their] intelligence and surveillance capabilities.”
The Daily Beast was nevertheless able to identify Kurdistan’s ruling clan from otherwise sealed depositions in the case that feature as exhibits in a separate New York action against members of the Barzani family. That case alleged the Kurdish political dynasty’s involvement in a years-long corruption, fraud, and money laundering scheme.
The MAGA lawyer’s arguments in the highly secretive spyware suit contrast with filings in his later case against the Defense Department and NSA, brought in April 2024, where he slammed the U.S. intelligence agency’s failure to produce records on domestic surveillance operations against American citizens for “depriving the public of necessary and important information with which to hold the government accountable.”
Kittila is not the only attorney at Halloran Farkas & Kittila, the law firm he founded and where he works as managing partner, with ties to the GOP. Former Delaware Attorney General and Superior Court Judge M. Jane Brady, who joined the group in November 2024, was a founding member of the Republican Attorneys General Association.
Nor is it the first time the Barzani family has made headlines in the U.S. An investigation this month by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project revealed how former President Massoud Barzani’s sons, who have long fended off allegations of kleptocracy at home, spent tens of millions dollars on luxury real estate in Virginia, Florida, Texas, and California.
In October 2023, the Daily Beast reported how, in 2019, Virginia Sheriff Scott Jenkins accepted bribes from an Iraqi fixer tied to the Barzanis in exchange for deputies’ badges. The badges grant bearers qualified immunity from civil liability and the right to carry concealed service weapons, as well as access to areas otherwise restricted to law enforcement. Trump pardoned Jenkins in May.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act, which imposes public disclosure requirements on agents of foreign interests in the U.S., contains an exemption for legal professionals, like Kittila, representing foreign clients in the course of normal court proceedings.
Responding to request for comment on this story, Kittila said his firm “represents a wide variety of clients from many different political views, including high ranking Democrats and other political organizations,” and that “our partners also hold a diversity of political views.”
He added the Kurdistan lawsuit had been placed under seal “for the safety of the parties and the firms and the lawyers,” and that the release of its details by other parties “has needlessly placed people at risk.”
Lawyers for Prime Minister Barzani did not respond to emailed requests for a statement in time for this story’s publication.
