Inside the 17-year lawsuit between a Trump official and his interior designers

 On a Friday afternoon in November 2015, a message arrived in the inbox of the owners of Design & More, a small Tallahassee interior design firm. The married couple behind the local business, Russell and Rose Marie Brabec, had been entangled in a bitter lawsuit for the better part of a decade. The email, addressed primarily to their defense attorney, began:

“DO NOT THREATEN OR UNDERMINE MY ATTORNEY YOU BELLIGERENT COWARD. HE HAS SHOWN YOU COURTESY AND DIGNITY YOU DO NOT DESERVE. I AM YOUR ENEMY. FACE ME YOU PATHETIC MORON.”

The sender? Pete Marocco, who later became a Trump administration official best known for his work in the closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development this year.

It took only a few weeks for Marocco to oversee the gutting of USAID, the agency responsible for distributing medicine, food, clean water and other aid to foreign countries. But for 17 years, Marocco has been battling the Florida interior design firm in a lawsuit that the presiding judge described as “reaching Dickensian levels of challenges to the effectiveness of the civil justice system.”

The litigation’s twists and turns astonished experts who reviewed the docket: Over the years, Marocco filed to disqualify three circuit court judges, succeeding twice. At one point, he sued his opponent’s attorney directly, a step that legal scholars deemed unusual and which was dismissed by the courts. At another, the defendants accused Marocco of engineering a scheme over email to get a judge to recuse himself. Marocco consistently made the case in his filings that he was fighting against a corrupt judicial system determined to help the Brabecs and their lawyer prevail.

It began as a run-of-the-mill contract dispute over costs that Marocco said were inflated for work at two properties he owned and the possession of furniture and decor, such as a camel sculpture and an abalone lamp. The case was almost settled early on for $25,000 and an apology over the phone. Instead, it ballooned into a legal epic.

“I’ve never heard of a commercial civil case like this that’s this long. Ever,” said David Hoffman, a professor of contract law at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School who reviewed the legal docket. “Even though it started off petty, it has now become like a grand opera.”

The lawsuit began in 2008. Marocco sold the two properties involved more than a decade ago. The trial ended in early 2017, with the judge determining that each party owed the other a few thousand dollars. Design & More declared bankruptcy and no longer exists. And yet, at the circuit court in Leon County, Florida, this same case marches on.

Marocco declined to comment for this article. The Brabecs did not respond to repeated requests for comment, nor did their lawyers. The active judges are barred from commenting on ongoing litigation. The Washington Post reviewed more than 1,000 legal filings from the 2nd Judicial Circuit of Florida, the First District Court of Appeal, the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Florida to tell this story.

Milan Markovic, a law professor at Texas A&M University, was bewildered when he reviewed the docket. “It’s just a boondoggle,” he said. “I feel very sorry for everyone involved.”

In the summer of 2008, Marocco asked his Tallahassee neighbors Russell and Rose Marie Brabec for help fixing up two residences he owned — a house down the street from them and a luxury condominium downtown — while he was in Iraq working as a government contractor.

Emails between the two men that summer were friendly, as Russell Brabec kept Marocco updated on Design & More’s work, according to emails included as exhibits in the lawsuit. In one exchange, Marocco asked Russell Brabec if he could recommend a lawyer because he needed to deal with some “Tallahassee drama.”

“I can give you a Nasty lawyer but make a list of what You have to gain and what the gain will cost you. As you know Peter we all need to pick our battles,” Brabec wrote back.

The relationship appeared to sour after Marocco received an invoice from Design & More for $42,647.13 at the end of August, which he interpreted as a final due notice, per his filing. (Rose Marie Brabec said in a later deposition that this was actually just a list of all of their furniture and decor they wanted Marocco to eventually return.)

Marocco sued for breach of contract and conversion. According to his September 2008 filing, the Brabecs didn’t complete the work they had agreed upon and did work they weren’t supposed to — for example, painting a ceiling in addition to the walls. Marocco also said they damaged his property and held onto some of his items, such as a small mirror from a guest bedroom, valued at $90.

The Brabecs countersued. Marocco owed them money for subcontractors, they said, and was “wrongfully detaining” furniture and decor that had been used to stage the condominium for rental, including a green sofa with brown trim, an animal fabric lounge chair, an oil painting depicting a Florida marsh with a bird, a camel sculpture and a suite of Egyptian cotton bathroom towels.

Weeks after that, Design & More filed liens against Marocco’s two properties. These legal claims against property are intended to help creditors collect debt and can affect a home sale, a credit score or — relevant to Marocco, per court filings — a security clearance. (Some of the most lucrative government contract work depends on a top-secret clearance.)

Despite a year filled with rancorous legal filings, the parties managed to reach a settlement in November 2009. The Brabecs agreed to pay Marocco $25,000. (They also would remove from the court record a family member’s affidavit alleging that Marocco threatened him over the phone, and Russell Brabec would call Marocco to apologize.) In exchange, everyone would dismiss their charges and liens.

But a few things went wrong. The first $25,000 check from the Brabecs didn’t clear (although a subsequent one did), per legal filings. And although the Brabecs canceled their liens, Marocco was not pleased with the language they used, according to emails between him and their attorney at the time, William Crawford.

The matter of returning some light fixtures illuminated how the two parties disagreed about, well, nearly everything. In one exchange, Marocco accused the Brabecs of acting like “an ex-girlfriend that won’t come and get her things so she has an excuse to whine perpetually.”

Marocco filed to scuttle the settlement in April 2010. The Brabecs fought to keep it in place. Marocco won that particular round in February 2011. Back to litigation.

But on the day of that victory, Marocco emailed the Brabecs striking a very different tone, according to filings, blaming attorneys for everything getting out of hand. “I think if you really took a second to find out who I am, you would be quite surprised, contradicting the ‘psycho ex-military guy’ you and your friends have spoken so ill of,” he wrote. If this was meant to be an olive branch, it ultimately withered.

Marocco faulted one lawyer in particular: Davison Dunlap Jr., whom he often presented in his filings as the true villain of the lawsuit, with his clients, the Brabecs, as mere rubes. (Dunlap did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)

Marocco sued Dunlap directly in 2012, accusing him of negligence, recklessness and slander. In particular, he argued that Dunlap filed fraudulent liens, which imperiled Marocco’s livelihood. The suit was filed and dismissed twice at circuit court.

Suing your opponent’s lawyer because you disagree with how they handled the case is “facially ludicrous,” said Melissa Mortazavi, a law professor at the University of Oklahoma who focuses on legal ethics and reviewed the docket. “That person doesn’t owe you a duty of care. … It just, to me, is a sign that the person who made the motion has actually filed a frivolous motion.”

Marocco, representing himself in this separate case, appealed the dismissal, at one point calling Dunlap “a nepotistic coward who shamelessly lobbies trial judges and the prosecutor in the Second Judicial Circuit of Florida to give him false leverage in a ridiculous civil action as if they are a part of his country club potluck.” In 2014, the appeals court unanimously agreed with the lower court’s decision to dismiss.

This kind of “colorful language” is extremely rare for professional lawyers, per Mortazavi, but is far more common among people who represent themselves, “especially as they get more emotionally desperate.” She said that “people forget that this isn’t like a chatroom.”

A 2015 email to the design firm and its lawyer featured more scorched-earth language. In that message, Marocco reserved special ire for Dunlap.

“I will be there for your cowardly delays and distractions,” Marocco wrote, according to court filings. “I will be there as ‘Dunlap’ becomes a law school pseudonym for cowardly false leverage. I will be there as the legislature and licensed contractors hammer your firm to ruin, and as your son and your clients file bankruptcy. … By all means, I actually want to see if you can turn your cowardice into the longest running civil litigation in the history of Leon County, and appeal it to the Supreme Court.”

Marocco ended his message with an offer for Dunlap to pay for everything he felt the Brabecs owed him, with interest, and this caveat: “I might consider no interest after you march into [the judge’s] 2nd Judicial Circus, stick the third restatement of intentional torts up your ass, and sincerely sling your s--- around his chambers. My offer expires in 24 hours.”