Christopher Steele: Dubious hearsay from Danchenko’s drinking buddies and an old girlfriend became part of the dossier. (Credit: AP)
Donald Trump is suing a British private investigations firm in a London court to prove claims that he engaged in “perverted sexual acts” in Russia are false, the former U.S. president said in documents released on Monday.
Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is suing Orbis Business Intelligence for alleged data protection breaches over a dossier written by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who co-founded Orbis.
The Steele dossier, published by the BuzzFeed website in 2017, alleged ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia and said Trump engaged in sexual behaviour that gave Russian authorities material with which to blackmail him.
Many of the allegations were never substantiated and lawyers for Trump, 77, said in court filings on Monday that the report is “egregiously inaccurate”.
Trump said in a witness statement that the dossier contained “numerous false, phoney or made-up allegations” and that he sued Orbis to “prove, by evidence at trial, that the data are false”.
Trump said he had not at any time hired prostitutes to engage in “golden showers” – a sex act involving urination – in a Moscow hotel, taken part in “sex parties” in St. Petersburg or given Russian authorities “sufficient material to blackmail me”.
Orbis, however, argues that Trump is bringing the claim simply to address his “longstanding grievances” against the company and Steele. (Read more: Reuters, 10/16/2023) (Archive)