SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The California Republican Party is accusing its one-time finance director of stealing sensitive donor information. In a lawsuit filed last month in Sacramento County, party leaders claim the theft is to bolster a forthcoming whistleblower retaliation and harassment lawsuit against the party.

The California GOP sued Tiffany Qualls, 38, last month after the party said she forwarded sensitive donor and fundraising information to her personal email addresses, violating a confidentiality agreement they said she signed upon her hiring as party finance director in February. The party let her go four months later, in June.

The state GOP has struggled in recent months to match the fundraising prowess of its Democratic rivals after minority leaders in the state Legislature broke a joint fundraising agreement with the state party in favor of directing donors to give to local parties.

Party discord has also been a problem as leaders like Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, R-San Diego, have developed their own fundraising and organizing infrastructure to harness political support independent of the state party.

Earlier this year, delegates failed to agree on who to endorse for governor at the state party convention. And Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who came in fifth in the race, declined to endorse Steve Hilton, who advanced out of the June 2 primary as the Republican gubernatorial nominee.

During Qualls’ four-month tenure, the party received just under $120,000 in mostly small dollar donations, during a competitive primary season, while the state Democratic Party raked in $15.1 million, according to campaign finance records.

Donor mailing addresses, fundraising and finance plans

Weeks after she was hired on Feb. 15, Qualls started forwarding sensitive party information to her personal emails, like donor mailing addresses, fundraising and finance plans, a contributions tracker, a vendor telemarketing plan, and lists of major campaign contributors, according to the GOP’s initial complaint filed on Aug. 3 in Sacramento County Superior Court.

A list included in court records showed that she forwarded at least 49 messages between March and June 22, the day the GOP fired her.

The data is now on a laptop and in email addresses exclusively owned and controlled by Qualls, who has refused to return or destroy the records, according to the GOP. In court records, Qualls said she had not sent anyone else the allegedly pilfered data, but the GOP’s attorneys said she had said on at least two occasions that she intended to use the information in forthcoming litigation to sue the party.

The GOP retained San Francisco law firm Columbo Deol to represent itself. In the initial Aug. 3 complaint, attorneys John-Paul Deol and Michael Columbo wrote that the GOP did not know the full scope of what Qualls allegedly transferred.

In an amended complaint dated Aug. 27, Columbo and Deol said that party officials had discovered “materially broader” breaches after conducting an internal review of its email system.

The GOP claims Qualls violated her contract, misappropriated trade secrets under federal and state law, and committed an unauthorized theft of computer data. The party is seeking recoup of attorneys’ fees and a court order forcing Qualls to return or delete the stolen information.

Qualls did not respond to two requests for comment via email or text message, and hung up when reached by phone.

In court records, she said she was looking for an employment lawyer to represent her as she prepares to sue the California GOP for “clear-cut whistleblower retaliation and hostile work environment conditions,” including claims of sexual harassment and gender discrimination.

Mark Tiedman of the Frontier Law Center said in court records that he briefly represented Qualls in her forthcoming litigation against the GOP before withdrawing in July. Another attorney, Sacramento employment lawyer Ognian Gavrilov, disputed Qualls’ claim in court filings that he represented her.

At the time of her hiring in February, Qualls was also suing her former employer, a Nevada Republican consulting firm, for alleged racial discrimination and sexual harassment in an ongoing lawsuit.

The California Republican Party declined to answer questions about how it vetted Qualls or if party leaders knew Qualls was suing her former employer before hiring her, citing confidentiality.

The party did not notify donors of the alleged breach, according to Colombo and Deol.

“Donors were not made aware because the materials Ms. Qualls took were the party’s proprietary reports and fundraising records, not the kind of personal information that creates a security concern for any individual donor. That does not make it any less serious,” the attorneys said in a statement.

The attorneys also said Qualls had not raised any concerns of harassment, retaliation or discrimination during her employment, nor had it received any countersuits. They also accused Qualls of using artificial intelligence in her legal responses.

“These unsupported accusations only surfaced in papers that read as though AI wrote them, and only after the Party demanded its property back,” the attorneys said. “Should she file anything against the Party, it will answer and vigorously defend itself in the proper forum.”

The GOP asked Qualls to return the data in a series of six letters sent in late June and July, according to court records. Qualls initially agreed on July 29 to a neutral forensic examination of her computer and emails, but withdrew her cooperation a day later and declined another attempt to engage in arbitration, before the party sued her on Aug. 3.

The GOP said it does not believe Qualls passed the data on to a third party, but alleged that she “stated in writing that (she) intended to retain those materials and to use them for (her) own purposes rather than return them.”

Qualls’ lawsuit against RMC

Two months before her hiring in California last spring, Qualls sued her previous employer, the Las Vegas-based Republican consulting firm Revolutionizing Microtargeted Campaigns, in a Nevada state court.

RMC and its founder, Republican consultant Rory McShane, have advised conservative politicians like former Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, Arizona U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, and the House Freedom Caucus’ political action committee.

Qualls alleged in an ongoing lawsuit filed last December that the firm’s executives had subjected her to racial and gender discrimination as a Black woman and retaliated when she complained by firing her.

She filed the lawsuit in a Las Vegas-area district court after the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission closed a complaint she brought against the company in July 2023.

In her complaint, Qualls said McShane hired her as an intern in December 2022 and later as a full-time fundraiser at McShane LLC, which rebranded as RMC in late 2024.

Qualls said she began experiencing sexual harassment the month she started at McShane, accusing a married male executive of persistently offering her rides to work for three months after she told him she was uncomfortable.

Qualls said she later attended two separate team dinners in 2023 where she claimed male coworkers asked her to name the “wildest place” she had ever had sexual intercourse, made racist jokes about another employee’s Asian wife, and McShane reportedly made a comment about wanted to make “mocha babies” with her, which McShane denied.

After reporting mistreatment at the hands of other team members, who allegedly called her “stupid” in text and emails to clients, Qualls said the firm put her on leave while it investigated and eventually laid her off in August 2023, then reposted her job for hiring.

A lawyer listed as Qualls’ attorney in that case did not respond to a request for comment.

Brian Hardy, an attorney for McShane, denied all the allegations, and said he was “not surprised” to learn about the California GOP’s lawsuit against Qualls when contacted by The Sacramento Bee.

“Frankly, these allegations bear a striking resemblance to those made against my client and appear to reflect a pattern of conduct. The allegations of harassment against RMC are false,” Hardy said. “The facts are well documented and clearly demonstrate that my client did nothing wrong. Investigations into the matter have confirmed no wrongdoing; we believe the record speaks for itself and are confident that all claims will be dismissed.”

After denying the California GOP’s request for a temporary restraining order, Judge Christopher Krueger scheduled a hearing for a motion to compel arbitration for Oct. 8, and another hearing for a motion on a preliminary injunction in April 2027.

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