Former US President Donald Trump must pay £300,000 in legal fees to Christopher Steele following the UK High Court’s dismissal of his claim against Steele’s company for reputational damage and breach of right to data protection. The former US President’s lawsuit against Orbis Business Intelligence Limited (Orbis) concerned two memoranda in the Steele Dossier, an unverified dossier of memos detailing various allegations suggesting conspiracy between Trump and Moscow written by Steele.

Three claims were brought against Orbis. The first claim, brought in 2020, was Aven v Orbis Business Intelligence Limited [2020] EWHC 1812 (QB), which was filed pursuant to the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) on the basis that the memoranda breached data protection laws as they contained allegations about personal data “which were inaccurate.” This claim concerned Memorandum 112 in particular.

The second claim, Gubarev v Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd [2021] EWHC 2912 (QB), EMLR 5, was a libel claim brought against both Orbis and Steele. Trump argued that he suffered reputational damage and “distress” from the allegations. This claim concerned Memorandum 166.

This most recent ruling relates to the third claim, President Donald J Trump v Orbis Business Intelligence Limited [2024] EWHC 173 (KB). Christopher Steele successfully applied to dismiss Trump’s claim on the basis that “they disclose no reasonable grounds for bringing the claim and/or they are an abuse of the court’s process […] and has no real prospect of succeeding.”

In February, Justice Steyn ruled:

[t]here were no reasonable grounds for claiming for compensation for distress in respect of the only remaining act of data processing. […] As the Claimant [Trump] had no real prospect of obtaining any of the remedies he sought, the Defendant was entitled to summary judgement on the whole claim.

Justice Steyn said the case was “bound to fail” and ordered Trump to pay £300,000 in legal fees to Orbis.