Donald Trump is taking his campaign of harassing litigation global. He’s already sued Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Rod Rosenstein, the DNC, Michael Cohen, CNN, the Washington Post, Twitter, YouTube, Meta, Stormy Daniels, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and the Pulitzer Prize board. And now he’s jumping the pond to sue investigator Chris Steele and his former bosses at Orbis Business Intelligence over the “scandalous” allegations in the infamous Steele Dossier.
Trump, who brags about grabbing women by the genitals and once put a “naked” Melania Trump on the phone with Howard Stern’s show to claim that they bonked twice a day and that he was the most fantastic lover on earth, is bigly mad that he was “compelled to explain to his family, friends, and colleagues that the embarrassing allegations about his private life were untrue. This was extremely distressing for the Claimant.”
Note that he’s not suing over the claim that he lied about trying to build a Trump tower in Moscow, which is factcheck true.
Trump, who was recently found liable by a jury for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, is apparently incensed at the passages in the dossier that describe “sex parties” in Moscow and the famous piss-en-lit allegations. That’s right, he’s still pissed about the pee tape, so he’s suing Orbis and Steele for illegally processing his personal data in violation of UK privacy laws.
“The only way that I can fully demonstrate the total inaccuracies of the personal data in the dossier is to bring these proceedings and to prove, by evidence at trial, that the data are false,” he said in a witness statement to the judge reported by Reuters, adding, “A judgment of the English court on this issue will be an immense relief to me as it will completely confirm the true position to the public at large.”
Note that this is not a defamation case, even though the UK’s libel laws are far more favorable to plaintiffs than America’s. As the Washington Post notes, English courts already dismissed a libel case brought by Russian businessman Aleksej Gubarev, on the theory that Steele and Orbis were not responsible for the dossier’s publication after it was leaked to BuzzFeed. But three oligarchs, German Khan, Petr Aven and Mikhail Fridman, won a privacy case in Britain’s High Court similar to Trump brings now, alleging that the dossier inaccurately reported their personal data. The recovery there was minimal, at just $22,000 per defendant, with four of the five charges being dismissed.
In court, Trump’s barrister Hugh Tomlinson argued that “President Trump begins this case because he seeks a vindication of his legal rights… that the statements in these memoranda are false.”
But Antony White, counsel for Orbis and Steele, countered that the suit is “principally based on reputational damage allegedly suffered by the claimant,” i.e. it’s really a libel action dressed up for Halloween (All Hallows’ Eve?) as a privacy claim, and is anyway barred under the statute of limitations, or whatever they call it over there.
“This claim is bound to fail on limitation grounds and because any reputational damage, and any resulting distress, allegedly suffered will have been caused by the BuzzFeed publication, for which the claimant accepts Orbis is not liable,” he said, according to the Daily Mail.
Trump did not attend the hearings in London yesterday and today — and not because he was in court in New York for his civil fraud trial or in DC for the hearing on the proposed gag order the election interference case. But Tomlinson told Judge Karen Steyn that his client intends to refute the “shocking and scandalous claims” against him “by giving evidence in this court.”
Perhaps the lawyer is unaware of the great lengths his client has gone to in order to avoid giving testimony under oath in any venue. Mayhap he neglected to watch the deposition video of Trump’s testimony in the E. Jean Carroll case, wherein his client mistook the plaintiff for his second wife and opined that he didn’t want to have sex with the plaintiff’s lawyer. It might behoove the good lawyer speak to Joseph Tacopina, Trump’s lead attorney in the E. Jean Carroll case, who practically had an aneurysm in open court when his bloviating client threatened to cut short a trip to Scotland and come testify in his own defense. In short, be careful what you wish for, sir, because you just might get it.
JKLOL, he will never get it.
[Reuters / Washington Post / Daily Mail]
Catch Liz Dye on Opening Arguments podcast.
If you’re ordering from Amazon, this link gives us a small commission.
