A judge in England has ruled that Donald Trump must pay over £620,000 in legal fees after he lost his lawsuit against a company regarding allegations he participated in “perverted” sexual activities.
In 2022, the former US president filed a data protection lawsuit against Orbis Business Intelligence, a consultancy established by former MI6 officer Christopher Steele.
Steele is known for the Steele dossier, which includes claims—denied by Trump—that he was “compromised” by the Russian security agency, the FSB, along with two memos alleging he engaged in “sex parties” while in St Petersburg and associated with sex workers in Moscow.
In February of the previous year, Mrs. Justice Steyn dismissed the lawsuit without addressing the veracity of the allegations, instructing Trump to cover Orbis’s legal costs “for the entire claim,” starting with an initial payment of £290,000, which was reported in January as being unpaid by Trump.
As a result, he was barred from participating in a three-day hearing to determine the total legal costs, culminating in Judge Rowley’s order on Thursday for Trump to pay a total of £626,058.98.
The judge deemed this amount “both reasonable and proportionate,” with interest compounding daily at a rate of 12%.
In his witness statement, Trump stated that he pursued the case to demonstrate that the allegations in the Steele dossier, published by BuzzFeed in 2017, claiming he engaged in “perverted sexual acts” in Russia were untrue.
Numerous claims from the dossier remain unverified, and Trump’s legal team described the report as “egregiously inaccurate,” filled with “numerous false, phoney or fabricated allegations.”
The dossier, assembled in 2016, became a source of controversy just before Trump’s inauguration, containing rumors and unverified claims that have since been mostly debunked. Steele was compensated by Democrats for research that included sensational allegations which could potentially be used to blackmail Trump.
Orbis argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed since the report was never intended for public release and was made public by BuzzFeed without authorization from Steele or Orbis. They also contended that the claim was filed past the permissible timeline.
