Former President Donald Trump faces a six-figure legal bill over a failed lawsuit stemming from the discredited research dossier authored by British ex-spy Christopher Steele, which played a key role in the FBI’s probe into the 2016 Trump campaign.
Judge Karen Steyn wrote in the order that President Trump must pay all of Orbis’ legal costs in the case. While the judge noted that the company has estimated its costs at over $767,000, she ordered the former president to pay about half that for now, with a specialist judge to determine a final bill at a later date.
Case Dismissed
President Trump sued Orbis Business Intelligence in October 2023, seeking damages from the firm for allegedly violating British data protection laws in connection with the publication of the dossier authored by Mr. Steele, who was paid by Democrats to compile research that contained various salacious claims.Hugh Tomlinson, the former president’s attorney, argued before the court that the dossier “contained shocking and scandalous claims about the personal conduct of President Trump,” including false allegations that he paid Russian officials to boost his economic interests.
President Trump said in a written witness statement that the claims in the dossier, which included salacious claims of sex parties in Moscow that Russian spies could use for blackmail, were “wholly untrue.”
Orbis attorneys have argued that the lawsuit should have been thrown out because the dossier was never meant to be made public and was published by BuzzFeed without Mr. Steele’s permission. They also argued that President Trump’s legal team filed their claim too late
Judge Steyn sided with Orbis, concluding that President Trump chose to allow many years to elapse without taking legal action to vindicate his reputation since the dossier was released in 2017.
‘False and Defamatory Allegations’
After the judge ordered the case dismissed, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement that the former president would continue to fight to expose the inaccuracies in the dossier.“The High Court also found that there was processing, utilization, of those false statements. President Trump will continue to fight for the truth and against falsehoods such as ones promulgated by Steele and his cohorts,” Mr. Cheung added.
Some of the contents of the Steele Dossier formed part of the material that the FBI under the Obama administration used to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to spy on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
This surveillance, in turn, formed part of the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into President Trump’s 2016 election campaign and alleged Russian collusion.
In compiling the dossier, Mr. Steele was hired by opposition research firm Fusion GPS and funded by Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Mr. Steele used second- and third-hand sources with ties to the Kremlin in putting together his report.
Even though the claims in the dossier were unverified and Mr. Steele’s prior remarks suggested an anti-Trump bias, the FBI and Department of Justice signed off on the FISA warrants.
The salacious claims in the dossier, which was leaked to the media, became part of the “Russian collusion” narrative that President Trump and others have dismissed as a ploy meant to attack and discredit him and undermine his administration.
