In a ruling on Thursday, London’s High Court dismissed Donald Trump’s data protection lawsuit against a British private investigations firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, over a dossier that alleged ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia.
Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, had sued Orbis over claims in a dossier written by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who co-founded Orbis.
Judge Karen Steyn ruled that the former U.S. president’s case could not continue, saying in a written ruling that “there are no compelling reasons to allow the claim to proceed to trial”.
Trump had stated in a witness statement made public in October that he brought the case to disprove claims in the so-called Steele dossier, published by the BuzzFeed website in 2017, that he engaged in “perverted sexual acts” in Russia.
Trump’s lawyers, who argued that the report is “egregiously inaccurate” and contained “numerous false, phoney or made-up allegations”, pointed out that many of the allegations in the dossier were never substantiated.
Orbis, however, contended that Trump brought the claim simply to address his “longstanding grievances” against the company and Steele.
The London lawsuit is one of several legal cases involving Trump, who also faces four separate criminal prosecutions in the United States.
(Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Kate Holton)
