A judge in London on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit brought by former President Donald Trump over an infamous research dossier authored by British ex-spy Christopher Steele, which played a key role in the FBI’s probe into debunked allegations of a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to swing the 2016 election.
Judge Karen Steyn said on Feb. 1 that the lawsuit that President Trump filed in October against Orbis Business Intelligence, which was founded by Mr. Steele, should be dismissed.
“There are no compelling reasons to allow the claim to proceed to trial,” she said, per The Associated Press.
Hugh Tomlinson, the former president’s attorney, argued before the court in October 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.
‘False and Defamatory’
President Trump said in a written witness statement that the claims in the Steele Dossier, which included allegations of engaging in sex parties in Moscow that Russian operatives could use for blackmail, were “wholly untrue.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told news outlets in a statement that the former president’s fight to show that the contents of Mr. Steele’s dossier are false and defamatory would continue.
“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.
Attorneys for Orbis have argued that the lawsuit should be 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 the claim was filed too late. The judge sided with this view, 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.
Lawsuit Over Russiagate Claims
In 2022, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by President Trump against Mr. Steele, former top FBI officials, and his 2016 Democrat rival Hillary Clinton, in which the former president alleged they helped concoct the so-called Russiagate investigation that cast a pall over much of his presidency.President Trump’s lawsuit in Florida alleged that the 31 defendants were involved in creating and promoting the Steele Dossier and that such acts amounted to crimes including conspiracy, theft of trade secrets, and obstruction of justice.
But U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, said that President Trump’s lawsuit “does not establish that Plaintiff is entitled to any relief” and that the claims presented in it “are not warranted under existing law.”
Information from 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 Ms. 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.
