Trump sues over Steele dossier, alleging reputational ‘damage and distress’

LONDON - Donald Trump’s legal battles crossed the Atlantic on Monday with the start of a hearing against a former MI6 officer’s intelligence consultancy, which Trump says caused him “personal and reputational damage and distress.”

The 45th president is bringing a claim against Christopher Steele, a former British spy, and his consultancy, Orbis Business Intelligence, for alleged data protection breaches after the leak of an explosive dossier containing allegations that Russia had compromising material on Trump.

Steele was the author of what’s known as the Steele dossier, which made extravagant allegations about contacts between Trump’s 2016 election campaign and Russian officials and said that Trump engaged in “perverted sexual acts” that were monitored by Russian security services. Many of the allegations were never proved.

Trump previously dismissed the dossier as “fake news” and called Steele a “failed spy.”

Hugh Tomlinson, a lawyer for Trump, told a London court on Monday that Trump would deny the “scandalous” claims by “giving evidence in this court.” Tomlinson is a high-profile lawyer whose clients have included King Charles III and David and Victoria Beckham.

In his witness statement, seen by The Washington Post, Trump said that the allegations in the dossier were “wholly untrue.”

“I can confirm that I did not, at any time, engage in perverted sexual behavior including the hiring of prostitutes . . . in the presidential suite of a hotel in Moscow,” he wrote. He also said he did not take part in “sex parties” in St. Petersburg, nor did he “pay bribes to Russian officials in order to further my business interests” or “arrange for or connive in the silencing of any witnesses by coercion or bribery.”

“None of these things ever happened,” he wrote, adding that he wanted to “prove, by evidence at trial, that the data are false.”

[Judge overseeing election subversion case imposes gag order on Trump]

In filings to London’s High Court, Trump’s lawyers said he was seeking unspecified compensation for the infliction of “personal and reputational damage and distress.”

Trump was compelled to “explain to his family, friends, and colleagues that the embarrassing allegations about his private life were untrue,” they wrote. “This was extremely distressing for the Claimant.”

Lawyers for Orbis, a London-based firm founded by former British intelligence professionals, are seeking to have the case thrown out on the grounds that it doesn’t have a real prospect of succeeding and has been brought too late.

In written arguments, Orbis lawyer Antony White said that Trump had made “numerous abusive personal attacks and slurs” against Steele and that the former president had an “extensive track record of using legal proceedings to harass, bully and intimidate his perceived opponents.”

Steele is a former British spy who at one point was in charge of the service’s Russia desk. He wrote the report for Fusion GPS, a private investigation firm that received funding from Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The dossier was leaked to BuzzFeed, which published it in early 2017. After Steele was revealed as the person who assembled the report, he briefly went into hiding.

This is not the first time that Steele and Orbis have been sued over the dossier in British courts.

In 2020, Britain’s High Court dismissed a libel claim by Russian businessman Aleksej Gubarev. A judge ruled that, while references in the report were defamatory and caused harm to Gubarev’s reputation, Steele could not be held responsible for the report becoming public.

In a separate case, Orbis was ordered to pay Russian oligarchs Petr Aven and Mikhail Fridman $22,000 each after they brought a case claiming the dossier contained inaccurate personal data relating to them that was noncompliant under data protection laws.

Trump is fighting several cases in U.S. federal and state courts. The hearing in London is scheduled for two days. A decision is expected at a later date.