British justice on Thursday rejected the prosecution brought by former US President Donald Trump against ex-British spy Christopher Steele, whose controversial report on his supposed links with Russia caused a political storm in 2017.
The candidate for the Republican nomination for the 2024 US presidential election had appealed to the High Court in London in the name of data protection law concerning this document, which compiled unverified raw information and notably mentioned an alleged video of a sexual nature .
The 77-year-old former president had brought this action against the private intelligence company of the former agent of the British intelligence service MI6, Orbis Business Intelligence, and was demanding compensation for moral damage.
He targeted in particular two notes from this report which describe the alleged orgies in which Donald Trump allegedly participated in St. Petersburg, as well as others with prostitutes in Moscow.
“There are no convincing reasons” which would justify holding a trial, ruled the British High Court on Thursday, because, “whatever the merits of the assertion (…), the request compensation or payment of damages is doomed to failure.
According to Judge Karen Steyn, Donald Trump was not able to “formulate a viable appeal that would have a real chance of succeeding (…) and chose to let many years pass”, which made him say that the former president was mainly seeking to “defend his reputation” through this action.
Commissioned by the Democratic camp during the campaign for the 2016 American election, Christopher Steele compiled raw, unverified intelligence linking Donald Trump to Russia.
Some of his discoveries fueled the investigation by special prosecutor Robert Mueller who, after two years on this matter, concluded that there was evidence of Russian interference in the electoral campaign but not of collusion with the Donald Trump’s team.
If the former American president recognizes that the consulting company Orbis is not responsible for the publication of the report, he believes that it is she who “processed” the data contained in the document.
The latter also mentioned exchanges of information for almost a decade with the Kremlin and suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “supported and directed” an operation to “raise” Donald Trump’s candidacy for the American presidential election since “ at least five years.
For their part, the lawyers of the Orbis company had affirmed that their clients were “not responsible” for the possible damage to Donald Trump’s reputation caused by the publication without their knowledge of the report, and that the proceedings had the sole aim of “harass Orbis and Mr. Steele.”
