Former Republican President Donald Trump, once again a candidate in the 2024 US presidential election, will have to pay at least 300,000 pounds sterling (around 350,000 euros) in legal costs to the company of a former British spy , against whom he had initiated proceedings following the publication of a controversial report, according to a court decision made public in London on Thursday March 7.
In 2017, ex-spy Christopher Steele’s report on Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia caused a political storm. The former president, then in office, had taken the High Court of Justice in London under the data protection law concerning this document, which compiled unverified raw information and referred to an alleged video of a sexual nature.
He had brought this action against the private intelligence company of the former agent of the British intelligence services (MI6), Orbis Business Intelligence, and claimed compensation for moral damage. On February 1, the British courts rejected the prosecution brought by Donald Trump.
In a decision obtained Thursday by the British agency PA, the judge of the British High Court of Justice said that Donald Trump would have to pay the legal costs of Orbis Business Intelligence “for the entire complaint”. The ex-spy’s company estimated these costs at more than 600,000 pounds sterling (703,670 euros), according to the judge. She ordered the payment of 300,000 pounds sterling (351,860 euros) by Mr Trump, pending a specialist judge deciding the total amount of costs.
Commissioned by the Democratic camp during the campaign for the 2016 American election, Christopher Steele compiled raw, unverified intelligence linking Donald Trump to Russia. The report suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “supported and directed” an operation to “boost” Donald Trump’s US presidential bid for “at least five years”.
Some of his findings fueled the investigation by US Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, who, after two years on the matter, concluded that there was evidence of Russian interference in the election campaign, but not of collusion with Donald Trump’s team. If the former American president acknowledged that Orbis Business Intelligence was not responsible for the publication of the report, distributed without the company’s knowledge, he considered that it had “processed” the data contained in the document.
