At least one person responsible for the Russia collusion hoax may be facing consequences. The former President Donald Trump filed a data privacy claim in the United Kingdom, against former MI6 Agent Christopher Steele and the consulting firm he founded.
The lawsuit is based on Steele’s involvement with the creation of the “Steele Dossier”, which contains a number of false and unsubstantiated accusations about the former President and his supposed connections to the Russian Government.
Former President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the former MI6 agent Christopher Steele for his work on an infamous dossier bearing his name.
Trump is bringing in a data protection suit in the United Kingdom, against Steele who was British intelligence’s Russia desk, and his consulting company, Orbis Business Intelligence. This claim will be brought by Trump, aged 77.
“Proceedings were issued by President Donald J. Trump on behalf of Orbis Business Intelligence Limited. According to Lowles, the claim is based on breaches of UK Data Protection law due to the inaccurate processing of personal data of the President by Orbis after the publication of a false dossier.
The statement stated that “the President’s claim seeks to remedy the situation, including the erasure or correction of the inaccurate data within the Steele dossier as well as the payment for damages.”
In 2017, the dossier was released to discredit Trump’s presidency. It was intended to make it appear that he had won the election because he colluded with the Kremlin.
In the dossier, leaked in 2017 to BuzzFeed, it was also claimed that Vladimir Putin had “supported and directed”, an operation “cultivating” Trump as a candidate for president “for at least five years”. Trump has denied these claims.
Steele, Orbis Business Intelligence, and Russian national Aleksej Gubarev were sued by a Russian citizen for libel over the publication of this dossier. They claimed they were legally responsible. However, Mr Justice Warby, in an October 2020 judgment, dismissed the claim.
In the dossier, there were a number of salacious allegations. One of them was that Trump hired prostitutes who urinated on a bed of an old hotel room where former President Barack Obama had stayed. However, this document contained more than just a collection of false stories meant to embarrass Trump.
The FBI obtained a warrant to monitor Carter Page, who was a foreign policy advisor to Trump’s campaign in 2016. Agents investigating the former President used the document, even though it’s been discredited and debunked. Former deputy director Andrew McCabe said he wouldn’t have approved the surveillance warrant if he knew about the dossier’s many inaccuracies.
Igor Danchenko was charged with false statements by the Bureau. Later, he was acquitted. Steele has largely remained out of the spotlight since the dossier fiasco.
It remains to be seen if the United Kingdom courts will have any impact on the larger conversation about the use of intelligence by federal agencies as a weapon against political opponents. Even with all the indictments of Trump, there is still a possibility that this case could attract significant attention, given that the document was used as the basis for one of the biggest hoaxes in history.
