Former President Trump has been ordered to pay a six-figure legal bill for a company founded by a former British spy that he unsuccessfully sued for making what his lawyer called “shocking and scandalous” false claims that damaged his reputation.
A London judge, who dismissed the case against Orbis Business Intelligence last month saying it was “doomed to failure,” ordered Trump to pay $382,000 in legal fees, according to court documents released Thursday.
The case before the British court was one of the few in which Trump, who is almost certain to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, was not a defendant because he faces huge legal problems in his home country.
Trump is accused in four criminal cases and faces a civil complaint in US courts. He lost a subsequent defamation case in which a jury found him liable for sexual assault, and he was ordered to pay $355 million after a fraud ruling against his companies.
In England, he went on the offensive and sued Orbis, founded by Christopher Steele, who once ran the Russia office of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6.
Steele took money from Democrats for research that included salacious claims that the Russians could use to blackmail Trump. The so-called Steele dossier compiled in 2016 created a political storm just before Trump's inauguration, with rumors and unconfirmed claims largely discredited since.
Trump filed a lawsuit against the company, saying the file was fake and that Orbis had violated British data protection laws.
Lawyer Hugh Tomlinson said at a hearing in October that the former president “suffered personal and reputational damage” over allegations in the dossier that he participated in “sex parties” in St. Petersburg and slept with sex workers in Moscow.
Tomlinson said the dossier “contains shocking and scandalous allegations about President Trump's personal conduct” and includes allegations that he paid bribes to Russian officials to advance his business interests.
Orbis said the lawsuit should be dismissed because the report was never supposed to be published and was published by BuzzFeed without permission from Steele or Orbis. She also said the claim was filed too late.
Judge Karen Stein, who sided with Orbis in her Feb. 1 ruling, issued an order several days later on legal costs.
It reduced the amount of legal bills Orbis said it had incurred — £634,000 ($809,000) — by more than 50% because it said it was high considering there had only been a one-day hearing.
In 2022, a US federal judge in Florida dismissed a lawsuit filed by Trump against Steele, his 2016 Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and former top FBI officials, rejecting his claims that they helped set up the Russia investigation that has overshadowed much of his administration.
Brian Meili writes for The Associated Press
