London’s High Court has just thrown out a lawsuit Donald Trump brought against a British private investigations firm. The suit aimed to prove false persistent claims that Trump participated in “perverted sexual acts” in Russia.
This started with BuzzFeed in 2017 publishing a 2016 intelligence dossier, accessible here, which claimed Russia’s intelligence agencies have been “cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least five years”. Russia’s intention, according to the dossier, was “to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance”.
The dossier asserted that, “Former top Russian intelligence officer claims FSB has compromised TRUMP through his activities in Moscow sufficiently to be able to blackmail him. According to several knowledgeable sources, his conduct in Moscow has included perverted sexual acts which have been arranged/monitored by the FSB.”
This led to multiple inquiries by investigative media outlets, and many satirical shows, most persistently and hilariously by Stephen Colbert. The key claims, which have not yet been verified, are that (i) Trump in 2013 paid prostitutes to urinate on the bed in an exclusive Moscow hotel where Barack and Michelle Obama had once slept, as a form of insult, (ii) Putin has video recordings which compromise Trump and (iii) Putin will keep the tape secret as long as Trump cooperates with him.
After the issue seemed to have subsided, Trump last year brought a data protection lawsuit against Orbis Business Intelligence in the United Kingdom.
Judge Karen Steyn issued a written ruling yesterday explaining that the former president’s case could not continue because “there are no compelling reasons to allow the claim to proceed”.
Trump’s witness statement, made public in October, said he brought the case to disprove the widely-believed claims in the Steele dossier, named after British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.
So will we ever know the truth? Probably one day. But for now, we are no further advanced. The British court’s decision provides no evidence either way.
The facts remain, however, that since 2013 Trump has been extraordinarily supportive of Vladimir Putin, has rarely, if ever, criticised anything the dictator has said or done, and has taken multiple steps to weaken the western alliance against him.