A British Judge ordered Former President Donald Trump on Thursday to pay $382,000 in legal fees to a company he unsuccessfully sued in London over the Steele Dossier.
Reported by multiple news outlets, the order came last month after the judge dismissed Trump's lawsuit against Orbis Business Intelligence, which is a firm founded by former British spy Christopher Steele, saying the complaint was bound to fail.
Orbis Business Intelligence's Accumulated Legal Fees
Orbis Business Intelligence said it accumulated $809,000 in legal fees battling Trump's lawsuit. Still, London Judge Karen Steyn deemed the amount excessive, considering she dismissed the case after a one-day hearing. Steyn rejected the former president's case against Orbis last month, citing no compelling reasons for the claim to proceed to trial.
The amount of money Trump owes Orbis for legal fees may increase further as a judge will later decide the total costs for the failed lawsuit he filed in September. Orbis has requested around $760,000.
The Steele Dossier Lawsuit
Steele Dossier, authored by Christopher Steele, contains a series of memos about Trump's connection to Russia while vying for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, which Trump vehemently denied, claiming it was commissioned by Fusion GPS for opposition research purposes.
The dossier was published in early January 2017 after it was leaked to BuzzFeed just before Trump's presidential inauguration.
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During the October 2023 hearing, Trump's lawyer, Hugh Tomlinson, informed the judge that his client's reputation suffered due to the shocking and scandalous claims made by the former MI6 agent's firm in the dossier on allegations about Trump engaging in "sex parties" and "golden showers" with Russian prostitutes, and accepting bribes from Russian officials.
Trump's Counterattack on Baseless Allegations
Trump's lawsuit claimed that Orbis had breached British data protection laws by compiling the "Steele dossier" and that its baseless allegations were highly inaccurate. Orbis had been hired by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign through intermediaries to uncover damaging information about Trump before the November 2016 election, which was initially released by BuzzFeed News in January 2017.
Orbis' Dismissal Appeal
Orbis successfully contended that Trump's lawsuit should be dismissed because the dossier's findings were not intended for public disclosure and were published by BuzzFeed News without permission from Steele or Orbis, aside from the lawsuit being filed after the applicable deadline.
A federal judge in Florida threw out Trump's similar lawsuits against Steele, Clinton, and former high-ranking FBI officials in 2022, rejecting the claims by the leading GOP candidate for the 2024 election that they collaborated to initiate the Russia investigation, which dominated much of his presidency. However, in 2022, Clinton and the DNC settled with the Federal Election Commission, agreeing to pay fines totaling $113,000 for violating campaign finance laws by inaccurately reporting expenditures related to commissioning the dossier.
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