Donald Trump’s data protection lawsuit against a British private investigations firm over a dossier which alleged links between Trump’s 2016 election campaign and Russia was thrown out by London’s High Court on Thursday.
Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, had sued Orbis Business Intelligence about claims in a dossier written by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who co-founded Orbis.
What was the ‘Steele dossier’ against Donald Trump? Trump said he brought the case to disprove allegations in the so-called “Steele dossier,” which was published by BuzzFeed in 2017, that he had engaged in “perverted sexual acts” in Russia.
The former US president said the uncorroborated claims were “shocking and scandalous” and slammed the report as “egregiously inaccurate,” containing “numerous false, phoney or made-up allegations”.
Judge Karen Steyn however ruled that the case could not continue, saying in a written ruling that “there are no compelling reasons to allow the claim to proceed to trial.”
Steele, who once ran the Russia desk for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, was paid by US Democrats to compile research that included salacious allegations that Russians could potentially use to blackmail Trump.
Trump said the dossier was fake news and a political witch hunt.
mf/rt (AP, Reuters)
