Former President Donald Trump is taking legal action against former MI6 officer Christopher Steele, suing the British intelligence agent for his role in publicizing a dubiously credible dossier alleging that Trump was being blackmailed by the Russian government.
The lawsuit, filed on data protection grounds in the U.K., targets Steele and his firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, as disclosed by attorney Tim Lowles.
“Proceedings have been issued on behalf of President Donald J. Trump against Orbis Business Intelligence Limited. The claim relates to breaches of UK Data Protection law arising from the inaccurate processing of the President’s personal data by Orbis following the publication of the false ‘Steele Dossier,’” Lowles said.
The claim aims for remedies such as the erasure or correction of inaccurate data within the Steele Dossier, alongside damage compensations. The dossier, circulated during the 2016 elections before its publication by BuzzFeed News, allegedly documented Trump’s close relations with Moscow, suggesting potential Kremlin blackmail.
The most salacious claim was that “Trump paid prostitutes to urinate on a bed in a Moscow hotel room where Barack and Michelle Obama had stayed — and that the Russians had a tape of the whole thing,” according to the New York Post.
The initial dossier contributions were anonymously sourced, compiled by Fusion GPS under the directive of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. This information later facilitated a surveillance warrant against Carter Page, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser.
The FBI later publicly disavowed the dossier. Andrew McCabe, the bureau’s former deputy director, expressed regret over approving the Page warrant, given the dossier’s inaccurate information.
Igor Danchenko, the primary dossier source, faced charges for making false statements to the FBI regarding the dossier’s sourcing, although he was acquitted later. A two-day hearing for the lawsuit is scheduled to begin on October 16.
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