Court forces Trump to pay legal fees for company he sued over Russian sex party allegations

Donald Trump will have to pay the six-figure legal costs of the company he sued over allegations he took part in “perverted” sex acts and gave bribes to Russian officials.

The former, and possible future, US president brought legal action against Orbis Business Intelligence, a consultancy founded by a former MI6 officer.

Christopher Steele, who previously ran the Secret Intelligence Service’s Russia desk, was the author of the so-called Steele dossier, which included denied allegations that Mr Trump had been “compromised” by the Russian security service, the FSB.

At a hearing in London last year, the High Court was told Mr Trump was bringing a data protection claim over two memos in the dossier which claimed he had taken part in “sex parties” while in St Petersburg and engaged in “golden showers” with prostitutes in Moscow.

In a ruling last month, Mrs Justice Steyn threw out Mr Trump’s case, finding his compensation claim was “bound to fail”.

And in an order obtained by the PA news agency on Thursday, the judge also said the Republican front-runner will pay Orbis’s costs “of the entire claim”.

Mrs Justice Steyn said Orbis has estimated its costs to be more than £600,000.

She ordered that £300,000 should be paid by Mr Trump before the total costs are decided by a specialist judge.

The order, from early February, also said Mr Trump has made no attempt to bring an appeal.

The dossier, made up of more than a dozen memos, was produced by Orbis in 2016 ahead of the US election which saw Mr Trump become president before it was leaked to and published by BuzzFeed in 2017.

At the hearing in October 2023, Hugh Tomlinson KC, for Mr Trump, described the allegations in the memos – which also included a claim that the 77-year-old had “defiled” a bed previously used by former president Barack Obama and his wife – as “egregiously inaccurate”.

Dismissing the claim, Mrs Justice Steyn said the “mere fact” that Orbis had held copies of the memos could not cause Mr Trump distress.

The news comes as President Joe Biden is set to use his fourth State of the Union address on Thursday night to sharpen distinctions between him and Republican opponent Donald Trump, touting the country’s strong economy, push the rich to pay more taxes and try to ease voters’ concerns about his advanced age.

Biden’s annual address, an event that stems from the US Constitution’s requirement that a president report information to Congress “from time to time” on the state of the union, will be held at 9 p.m. (1400 GMT) before a rare joint session of the House of Representatives and the Senate, and a nationally televised audience.

It may be Biden’s biggest opportunity this year to reach the millions of voters weighing whether to vote for him, choose former President Trump, who pushed out challenger Nikki Haley this week, or to sit home on Election Day.

Polls show Biden, 81, and Trump, 77, closely tied in hotly contested battleground states where voting preferences can swing either to Republicans or Democrats. Most US voters, however, are not enthusiastic about either or about rematch between the two.