The High Court in London on Thursday ordered US President Donald Trump to pay £625,000 ($741,000) in legal costs after he unsuccessfully sued a former British spy over a salacious dossier.
Trump had sought to bring a suit against former MI6 officer Christopher Steele, who authored the so-called Steele dossier, which alleged the US leader had been compromised by Russian agents.
The dossier, made up of a dozen memos, sparked a political firestorm when it was published just before Trump’s first presidential inauguration in January 2017.
It contained unverified and controversial information about Trump and Russia that the former Republican leader has repeatedly denied, including allegations of sexual misbehaviour.
Trump brought a data protection claim in 2022 against Steele’s company Orbis Business Intelligence, but High Court judge Karen Steyn said there were “no compelling reasons” to allow the claim to proceed to trial.
The claim was “bound to fail”, she wrote in her judgment in February 2024.
The dossier included claims that Trump had been “compromised” by the Russian security service, FSB, and that Moscow had damning videotapes of Trump with prostitutes during a 2013 trip to the Russian capital.
It also alleged that Russian President Vladimir Putin “supported and directed” an operation to “cultivate” Trump as a presidential candidate for “at least five years”.
Trump claimed that Orbis unlawfully processed his personal data, and sought unspecified compensation for “serious distress and reputational damage”.
The company argued it was not responsible for the dossier’s publication.
The dossier, produced before Trump’s 2016 election win against Hillary Clinton, was commissioned by Democratic Party consultants.
Steyn threw out the case last year without ruling on the truth of the allegations.
Some of the allegations fuelled a probe by US special prosecutor Robert Mueller, which concluded in 2019 that the Russian government had interfered with the 2016 election but found no evidence of collusion with Trump’s team.
AFP
