{"id":141818,"date":"2018-06-15T20:40:55","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T20:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/trump-dossier-author-christopher-steele-fights-defamation-case\/"},"modified":"2018-06-15T20:40:55","modified_gmt":"2018-06-15T20:40:55","slug":"trump-dossier-author-christopher-steele-fights-defamation-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/trump-dossier-author-christopher-steele-fights-defamation-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump dossier author Christopher Steele fights defamation case"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure>                                  <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Christopher Steele\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/320\/cpsprodpb\/12B64\/production\/_102044667_tv042219002.jpg\"\/>Image copyright                  PA<figcaption>Image caption                                      Christopher Steele, a former MI6 agent, wrote a series of reports for political opponents of Donald Trump about Trump and Russia.                              <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"caps\">A former British spy who compiled a dossier alleging links between Donald Trump and the Kremlin is asking a US court to throw out a defamation case against him by three Russian oligarchs.<\/p>\n<p>In the legal action filed in Washington DC, Christopher Steele accuses Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan of intimidation. <\/p>\n<p>The oligarchs filed the case on 16 April after their names surfaced in Mr Steele&#039;s dossier.<\/p>\n<p>In their lawsuit, the tycoons argue that the dossier was &quot;gravely damaging&quot; because it &quot;falsely accuses Plaintiffs\u2026 of criminal conduct and alleged cooperation with the &#039;Kremlin&#039; to influence the 2016 presidential election&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Steele&#039;s file was commissioned by Mr Trump&#039;s political enemies before the 2016 election in a bid to dig up dirt on him.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>All you need to know about Trump Russia story<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The former British spy&#039;s attorney, Christina Eikhoff, told the BBC Russian Service that &quot;the case [against Mr Steele] was filed to punish and intimidate him. Mr Steele is not intimidated.&quot; <\/p>\n<p>However, the Steele legal team&#039;s court motion says the ex-MI6 officer is concerned for his safety, and fears any public disclosure of his home address could gravely endanger his family.<\/p>\n<figure>                                                                                                       Image copyright                  TASS<figcaption>Image caption                                      German Khan and two other Russian tycoons are mentioned in the so-called Trump dossier                              <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The oligarchs are also suing Mr Steele&#039;s investigative company, Orbis Business Intelligence, for alleged defamation.<\/p>\n<p>A lawyer for the three Russians told the BBC that Mr Steele&#039;s defence is &quot;nonsensical&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>The trio head the board of AlfaGroup, a Russian investment conglomerate that crops up repeatedly - misspelled as &quot;Alpha Group&quot; - in Mr Steele&#039;s dossier.<\/p>\n<p>In their lawsuit, they reject any suggestion of corruption or co-operation with the Kremlin to influence the US presidential election of November 2016.   <\/p>\n<figure>                                                                                                       Image copyright                  Getty Images<figcaption>Image caption                                      Mr Fridman (left) and Mr Aven (right)                              <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The three tycoons have previously brought a defamation case against Fusion GPS, the Washington DC-based research company that hired Mr Steele. <\/p>\n<p>They also sued BuzzFeed, which published the Steele dossier in January 2017. <\/p>\n<p>Both those cases are still ongoing.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dossier author feared &#039;Trump blackmail&#039;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>President Trump has repeatedly dismissed the Steele dossier on Twitter as &quot;fake&quot; and &quot;fraudulent&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Steele&#039;s legal team is trying to have the oligarchs&#039; defamation case dismissed by citing precedent law and the first amendment of the US constitution, which guarantees free speech.<\/p>\n<p>They also argue that they are protected by the District of Columbia&#039;s anti-SLAPP act, a defence against lawsuits that are filed simply to silence and scare off critics.<\/p>\n<p>In his dossier, Mr Steele said although the relationship between Russian President Vladimir Putin and AlfaGroup &quot;had had some ups and downs, the leading figures in Alpha [sic] currently were on very good terms with PUTIN&quot;.<\/p>\n<figure>             <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/images\/ic\/720x405\/p05b90bh.jpg\"\/>Media playback is unsupported on your device<figcaption>Media captionAll you need to know about the Trump-Russia investigation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>According to Mr Steele&#039;s lawyers, his dossier&#039;s statements do not amount to defamation and are not provably false. <\/p>\n<p>The court motion also points out that Mr Fridman and Mr Aven lost a defamation case over an article that sought to link AlfaGroup to organised crime and drug-trafficking in the early 1990s. <\/p>\n<p>In that lawsuit back in 2000, the two oligarchs sued the Washington DC-based Center for Public Integrity.<\/p>\n<p>But a judge threw out the legal action in 2005, ruling there was no malice in the publication.<\/p>\n<p>Alan Lewis, a lawyer for the oligarchs, told the BBC: &quot;The idea that we are seeking to punish or intimidate Mr Steele is nonsensical - he is not the victim here. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;Our clients are the victims of false and defamatory statements disseminated by Mr Steele. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;As our complaint alleges, Messrs Fridman, Aven and Khan brought this lawsuit because the allegations about them in the &#039;Trump Dossier&#039; that Mr Steele peddled to the media are false.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;And because Mr Steele irresponsibly peddled the harmful allegations contained in the Dossier to the media even though he knew at the time that those allegations had not been corroborated.&quot; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image copyright PAImage caption Christopher Steele, a former MI6 agent, wrote a series of reports for political opponents of Donald Trump about Trump and Russia. A former British spy who<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":141819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}