Donald Trump to give evidence in London over spy dossier
The former US president is suing Christopher Steele’s Orbis intelligence consultancy over bribery and sexual conduct allegations in Russia
Donald Trump is preparing to give evidence at the High Court in London to deny hiring prostitutes, holding sex parties and bribing Russian officials.
The former president of the United States is using data protection laws to sue a London-based intelligence consultancy founded by a former MI6 agent who produced a dossier of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Hugh Tomlinson KC, Trump’s lawyer, told the court that his client “brings this case because he seeks vindication of his legal rights”.
Trump wants to prove that the “shocking and scandalous claims about [his] personal conduct” are false and “intends to discharge that burden by giving evidence in this court”, he added.
Christopher Steele, 59, who ran the Secret Intelligence Service’s Russia desk before co-founding Orbis Business Intelligence, was in court for the preliminary hearing.
Trump, 77, claims
Steele’s dossier included a string of inaccurate information that breaches data protection laws. The former president says he “did not engage in perverted sexual behaviour in Russia and did not hire prostitutes” in the presidential suite of a Moscow hotel.
He denies having taken “any steps to defile the bed in which President and Mrs Obama had slept” or “engage in unorthodox behaviour in Russia” which could be used by the Moscow authorities to blackmail him.
Trump also says he did not pay bribes to Russian officials to further his business interests, take part in “sex parties” when in St Petersburg or bribe or coerce witnesses to his impropriety.
The former president has said it was “extremely distressing” having felt “compelled to explain to his family, friends and colleagues that the embarrassing allegations about his private life were untrue”. He claims Orbis has broken data protection laws by processing “false, intrusive and damaging allegations” about his personal life.
Tomlinson told Mrs Justice Steyn: “It is uncontroversial to say that President Trump is a controversial figure.” He said legal action was the only way Trump could bring the case and clear his name, and he is preparing to give evidence in court.
Although the former president “often expresses himself in strong language in social media . . . and has been subjected to strong criticism by judges in the US”, it “does not mean he is not entitled to enforce his rights in the court”, Tomlinson added.
He said the “now-notorious Steele dossier received worldwide publicity” after it was leaked to the Buzzfeed website in January 2017. He says Orbis broke data protection laws, as the information in the dossier “was not processed fairly or lawfully and was inaccurate”.
Tomlinson applied yesterday to amend the claim to remove Steele as a defendant and to add a breach of data protection law at the time the dossier was produced, a law that was replaced in 2018.
Tomlinson is one of Britain’s highest-profile media and information lawyers. His celebrity clients have included the King, Rebekah Vardy, David and Victoria Beckham, Jude Law and Roman Abramovich.
Steele argues that Trump’s claim is a legal “abuse of the process” as the former president is “motivated by personal animus”, the court was told. Trump’s claim against Steele in Florida was dismissed last year on the basis that it was the wrong jurisdiction.
The court was told that Trump accepts Orbis is not responsible in law for the publication by Buzzfeed. The reputational damage claim is confined to Steele’s sending of the dossier to Strobe Talbott, a former US deputy secretary of state; an unidentified UK national security official; and David Kramer, an aide to Senator John McCain, who was at the time chairman of the US Senate’s armed services committee and a member of the Senate committee on intelligence.
Antony White KC, defending Orbis, asked the judge to strike out Trump’s claim as an abuse of the legal process. He said the case in Florida last year was dismissed after a court ruled it was a “meritless, vexatious and politically motivated abuse of the court process”.
White said there has been an “exceptional and unexplained” delay in bringing the claim in London and the president has an “ extensive track record of using legal proceedings to harass, bully and intimidate his perceived opponents”.
The hearing continues.
Orbis was hired in 2016 by Fusion GPS, a Washington-based intelligence consultancy, to investigate alleged links between the man who was then the frontrunner to become the Republican presidential candidate, the authorities in Russia and President Putin. Fusion was instructed by a US law firm, Perkins Coie, which in turn was allegedly acting on instructions from the top of the Democratic Party.
Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence were previously sued in London for libel by the Russian national Aleksej Gubarev over the publication of the dossier, claiming they were legally responsible for BuzzFeed publishing the dossier. The claim was dismissed.
Petr Aven and Mikhail Fridman, who were among the owners of the Alfa Group investment conglomerate, have been awarded £18,000 compensation for a breach of data protection law after a judge ruled the information about them in the dossier was inaccurate.
Trump and his family business are currently facing a lawsuit from the New York attorney general’s office over allegations that he inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to secure better loan and insurance terms.
The former president is also facing four separate sets of criminal charges, including allegations that he conspired to defraud the US by preventing Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory over him.
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