A London judge has ordered former President Donald Trump to
pay six figures in legal fees to a company he sued over a controversial dossier
that made unverified and salacious allegations about him, according to court
documents released Thursday.
After dismissing the former president’s case last month
against retired British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and his
company, Orbis Business Intelligence, Judge Karen Steyn has ordered Trump to
pay £300,000 ($385,000) to the company, according to court documents.
While Orbis Business Intelligence said that its total costs
from the lawsuit were £636,356.66 (around $816,000), the company had asked for
Trump to be ordered to repay £444,000 (around $569,000) of that. Trump’s legal
team argued that these costs were too high considering that the case had been
dismissed at an early stage before any defense had been filed.
Steyn ultimately ordered Trump to pay less than 50% of Orbis
Business Intelligence’s stated costs.
CNN has reached out to Orbis Business Intelligence and the
Trump campaign for comment.
Trump brought the data privacy lawsuit in September against
Steele and his company, alleging that Steele harmed his reputation by peddling
“egregiously inaccurate” claims about his Russian ties.
The uncorroborated claims first emerged in the so-called
Steele dossier, which the former British spy secretly compiled on behalf of
Trump’s political opponents in 2016, and became public just days before the
former president’s inauguration in 2017. The dossier claimed that Trump
conspired with the Kremlin to win the 2016 election and that Russia had
compromising information on him.
The central allegations were initially given a veneer of
credibility because Steele had a solid reputation but a series of US government
investigations and lawsuits over the years have discredited many of the claims
and exposed the unreliability of Steele’s sources.
For his part, Steele has always publicly maintained that his
claims were unverified tips that required further investigation – and were
never meant to be released to the world.
News of the latest order comes after Trump has already been
hit with more than a half a billion dollars in legal penalties this year. The
former president has been ordered to pay E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million dollars
in her civil defamation case and a separate $355 million judgment – which has
been accruing interest – following a New York civil fraud trial. Trump also
faces his own legal fees in the 91 charges he faces in four criminal cases.
