Trump must pay legal fees for Steele Dossier lawsuit

A British judge ordered former President Donald Trump to pay legal fees of $382,000 to a company he unsuccessfully sued in London over the infamous “Steele Dossier” that came to light after his 2016 election.

The order, reported by multiple news outlets, came after the judge last month dismissed Trump’s suit against Orbis Business Intelligence, a firm founded by former British spy Christopher Steele, saying the complaint was “bound to fail.”

The amount of money that Trump owes Orbis for legal fees could grow even higher.

A specialist judge will later determine the total costs in the case that Trump must pay for the failed suit, which he filed in September. Orbis has asked for around $760,000.

A lawyer for Trump, who is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the legal fees order.

Steele was the author of a series of memos about Trump’s relationship with Russia, assembled as he sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

The memos, among other things, contained allegations that Trump had participated in sex parties in Russia.

Trump strongly denied those and other allegations in the Steele Dossier, which was prepared at the request of a company called Fusion GPS for opposition research.

The dossier was later leaked to the media outlet BuzzFeed, which published it in early January 2017, shortly before Trump was inaugurated as president.