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…
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