UK judge refuses Trump’s appeal in suit related to Steele dossier

(CNN) — A London appellate justice refused former President Donald Trump’s request to appeal the dismissal of his case against retired British spy Christopher Steele’s company over his controversial 2016 dossier.

The former president had sought permission to appeal Judge Karen Steyn’s February judgement that Trump’s data privacy case — which argued that Steele harmed his reputation by peddling “egregiously inaccurate” claims about his Russian ties — lacked merit and should be thrown out. Steyn also ordered Trump to pay £300,000 in legal fees to Steele’s company, Orbis Business Intelligence, which Trump requested to be stayed.

In his order Wednesday, Lord Justice Mark Warby said Trump’s “appeal would have no real prospect of success,” finding that some of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s arguments were contradictory and his appeal attempted to offer new points that he didn’t present before Steyn.

The ruling comes as a loss for Trump, who has already been hit with more than a half a billion dollars in legal penalties this year. The former president faces a deadline to post a $175 million bond next week following a New York civil fraud trial, and he has been ordered to pay E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million dollars in her civil defamation case. Trump also faces his own legal fees in four separate criminal cases.

Steele celebrated the ruling, telling CNN in a statement Friday that he is “grateful.”

“We believe this was a vexatious case, without merit which should never have been brought to the English courts,” Steele said. “We now look forward to receiving the interim payment from Donald Trump and a further costs award once the court has adjudicated the details.”

CNN has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment. A source familiar said Trump’s team plans to continue appealing.

Trump brought the lawsuit in September against Steele and his company, alleging that Steele harmed his reputation with “shocking and scandalous” claims about his Russian ties.

The retired spy compiled uncorroborated claims on behalf of Trump’s political opponents in 2016 in what eventually became known as the Steele dossier, which went public just days before the former president’s inauguration in 2017. The dossier claimed that Trump conspired with the Kremlin to win the 2016 election and that Russia had compromising information on him.

While the dossier was initially seen as credible due to Steele’s reputation, a series of US government investigations and lawsuits over the years discredited many of the claims.

For his part, Steele has always publicly maintained that his claims were unverified tips that required further investigation and were never meant to be released to the world.

CNN’s Kate Sullivan, Natasha Bertrand, Zahid Mahmood, Marshall Cohen and Catherine Nicholls contributed to this report.

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