UK court rejects Donald Trump's 'sex and bribes' data protection case

A London high court judge has rejected Donald Trump's data protection claim for damages related to claims in the "Steele dossier" that he engaged in "perverted" sex crimes and paid payments to Russian authorities.

Judge Steyn concurred that the case should not proceed to trial, as did Orbis Business Intelligence, the organisation established by the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who produced the information under dispute.

The court concluded that Trump's claim for damages had been filed outside of the six-year "limitations" period, but it did not "consider or determine the accuracy or inaccuracy of the memoranda," according to the verdict released on Thursday.

The court ruled that Trump “has no reasonable grounds for bringing a claim for compensation or damages, and no real prospect of successfully obtaining such a remedy”.

It added that the “only other remedy claimed was for a compliance order erasing or restricting processing of the memoranda” but that this would be “pointless, and unnecessary, in circumstances where the dossier was freely available on the internet, and the defendant had in any event undertaken to delete the copies it held”, according to the Guardian.

The former US president, who is currently leading the Republican field for this year's election, had said he would be prepared to testify in front of the high court in the case claiming Orbis Business Intelligence violated data protection laws with regard to the 2016 'Steele dossier'.

Steele, the former head of MI6's Russia desk, put up the dossier, which looked into Russian attempts to sway the 2016 US presidential election. BuzzFeed released it in 2017.

The document contained claims that Trump attended sex parties in St Petersburg and sexually exploited people to piss on each other in the presidential suite of a Moscow hotel. He refutes the assertions.