Christopher Steele, pictured in 2020. Photo: AFP / TOLGA AKMEN
By Gordon Corera, BBC News
Donald Trump's attempt to bring a case in the UK against a former MI6 officer who compiled a salacious dossier linking him to Russia has failed.
The former president had been seeking to use data protection laws to sue the company run by Christopher Steele but the High Court has thrown out the case.
Steele compiled the dossier which contained unproven allegations about bribing officials and sex parties.
It was leaked to the media just before Trump was sworn in as president.
In bringing the lawsuit against Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, he said the dossier contained allegations that were inaccurate and breached his data protection rights.
In Thursday's ruling in London, Justice Steyn DBE said she did not make any judgement on the allegations themselves but found Trump's claim had not been brought within the six-year limitation period.
"There are no compelling reasons to allow the claim to proceed to trial," she wrote.
A statement is expected from Steele later today. He has previously said the dossier was a series of memos based on intelligence and never meant for publication.
The case stems from 2016, when a US political consultancy asked Steele's company to produce a report into potential Russian interference in that year's US general election.
The project was paid for by Hillary Clinton's Democrats and other political opponents of Trump.
Steele, the former head of MI6's Russia desk, sent his findings to the FBI, a British national security officer and an aide to a senior US senator.
The dossier, later obtained and published by BuzzFeed News, detailed uncorroborated intelligence claims that Trump had a "compromising relationship with the Kremlin".
The former president said in his witness statement when he brought the case last year that "none of these things [in the Steele dossier] ever happened."
"I can confirm that I did not, at any time engage in perverted sexual behaviour including the hiring of prostitutes to engage in 'golden showers' in the presidential suite of a hotel in Moscow."
Trump said official investigations had debunked the dossier but it continued "to cause me significant damage and distress" because people still believed it.
He added that he had not had time to sue in the UK before 2023 because he had been busy being president.
Antony White KC, for Orbis, told the court in October that Trump had accepted that the company was not responsible for BuzzFeed's publication of the document.
Orbis also argued that the former president's case was an attempt to address "longstanding grievances".
An inquiry by Special Counsel Robert Mueller looked at allegations that Trump's campaign and transition teams conspired with Russian agents to sway the 2016 election in his favour.
It did not establish that there was a criminal conspiracy but it laid out 10 instances where he had possibly obstructed justice.
This story was originally published by the BBC.