Donald Trump to pay legal fees of company sued over dossier allegations
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Donald Trump will have to pay the six-figure legal costs of the company he sued over allegations that he took part in “perverted” sex acts and gave bribes to Russian officials.
The former US president brought legal action against Orbis Business Intelligence, a consultancy founded by former MI6 officer Christopher Steele.
Mr Steele, who previously ran the Secret Intelligence Service’s Russia desk, was the author of the so-called Steele dossier, which included denied allegations that Mr Trump had been “compromised” by the Russian security service, the FSB.
At a hearing in London last year, the High Court was told Mr Trump was bringing a data protection claim over two memos in the dossier which claimed he had taken part in “sex parties” while in St Petersburg and engaged in “golden showers” with prostitutes in Moscow.
In a ruling last month, Mrs Justice Steyn threw out Mr Trump’s case, finding his compensation claim was “bound to fail”.
And in an order obtained by the PA news agency on Thursday, the judge also said the Republican front-runner will pay Orbis’s costs “of the entire claim”.
Mrs Justice Steyn said Orbis has estimated its costs to be more than £600,000.
She ordered that £300,000 should be paid by Mr Trump before the total costs are decided by a specialist judge.
The order, from early February, also said Mr Trump has made no attempt to bring an appeal.
The dossier, made up of more than a dozen memos, was produced by Orbis in 2016 ahead of the US election which saw Mr Trump become president before it was leaked to and published by BuzzFeed in 2017.
At the hearing in October 2023, Hugh Tomlinson KC, for Mr Trump, described the allegations in the memos – which also included a claim that the 77-year-old had “defiled” a bed previously used by former president Barack Obama and his wife – as “egregiously inaccurate”.
Dismissing the claim, Mrs Justice Steyn said the “mere fact” that Orbis had held copies of the memos could not cause Mr Trump distress.
