Every major lawsuit tied to the Steele dossier has ended badly for the party bringing it. Donald Trump lost both of his: a UK data protection claim against Christopher Steele’s firm Orbis Business Intelligence, dismissed in February 2024 with more than £626,000 in costs against him, and a sweeping U.S. racketeering suit against Hillary Clinton and others, dismissed in 2022, sanctioned at nearly $938,000 in 2023, and affirmed on appeal in November 2025. Separate suits by Russian businessmen and a tech executive against Steele, Orbis, and Fusion GPS also collapsed, with one narrow exception. No court in any of these cases has ruled on whether the dossier’s allegations are true.
What the Dossier Is
The dossier is a set of sixteen memos, 35 pages in total, compiled in 2016 by former MI6 Russia desk head Christopher Steele. He was working as a subcontractor to the research firm Fusion GPS, which had been retained through the law firm Perkins Coie by a lawyer for the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The memos alleged compromising sexual conduct by Trump in a Moscow hotel, Russian government blackmail material, and a “well-developed conspiracy of co-operation” between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.1BBC News. Trump Loses Dossier Lawsuit Against Ex-Spy Christopher Steele BuzzFeed News published the full text in January 2017. Trump has denied every allegation.
Trump v. Orbis in the UK
The Claim
Trump filed in the High Court of Justice, King’s Bench Division, in London on October 26, 2022.2UK Judiciary. Trump v Orbis Business Intelligence Limited, Judgment He did not sue for defamation. Instead, he brought the claim under the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018, arguing that two memos contained “egregiously inaccurate” personal data about him. His lawyer Hugh Tomlinson pointed to claims that Trump had participated in sex parties in St. Petersburg, consorted with sex workers in Moscow, and paid bribes to Russian officials. Trump asked for compensation and for court orders requiring Orbis to correct or erase the data.3The Guardian. Trump Loses Lawsuit Over Steele Dossier
The theory borrowed from a 2020 case in which three Russian-born businessmen had won a narrow data protection ruling against Orbis and been awarded £18,000 each.45RB. Aven and Ors v Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd Mid-case, Trump tried to amend and add a claim under the older Data Protection Act 1998 to reach earlier conduct.2UK Judiciary. Trump v Orbis Business Intelligence Limited, Judgment
The Dismissal
On February 1, 2024, Judge Karen Steyn threw the case out. She refused the amendment, finding the proposed 1998 Act claim did not arise from “the same or substantially the same facts” and that Trump had given no explanation for the delay.5Inforrm. Trump v Orbis: Former President Trumped in High Court
On the remaining claim, she granted Orbis summary judgment, ruling it was “bound to fail.” Orbis had destroyed physical copies of the memos by January 2017 and retained files only for ongoing legal proceedings, making its post-May 2018 handling “minimal.” Storing documents already available online could not, she found, cause the kind of distress that warrants compensation, citing the UK Supreme Court’s decision in Lloyd v Google for the principle that a data protection award requires actual damage rather than a technical breach. The request for a correction order was dismissed as “speculative,” and Trump, the judge said, was really seeking “court findings to vindicate his reputation” without a viable legal remedy.5Inforrm. Trump v Orbis: Former President Trumped in High Court The court made no finding on whether the dossier’s allegations were true or false.1BBC News. Trump Loses Dossier Lawsuit Against Ex-Spy Christopher Steele
Appeal and Costs
Lord Justice Mark Warby refused permission to appeal on March 29, 2024, finding the appeal “would have no real prospect of success” and noting Trump’s arguments were contradictory and raised points not put to the trial judge.6CNN. Donald Trump Steele Dossier Appeal
Judge Steyn had ordered a £300,000 interim payment toward Orbis’s fees.3The Guardian. Trump Loses Lawsuit Over Steele Dossier7Reuters. Donald Trump Fails to Pay Legal Bill Over Failed Steele Dossier Lawsuit8The Guardian. Donald Trump Ordered to Pay Legal Costs in Steele Dossier Lawsuit9Los Angeles Times. Trump Ordered to Pay Legal Bill of UK Firm He Sued Over Russia Dossier
Trump’s U.S. RICO Suit Against Clinton and Others
In March 2022, Trump filed a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, seeking $24 million from Hillary Clinton, the DNC, former FBI Director James Comey, Christopher Steele, Fusion GPS, and dozens of other defendants. The complaint alleged a “deep state” conspiracy to fabricate ties between his campaign and Russia.10CNN. Judge Throws Out Trump’s RICO Lawsuit Against Hillary Clinton and Democrats
U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks dismissed the case on September 8, 2022. Most of the claims, he wrote, were “not only unsupported by any legal authority but plainly foreclosed by binding precedent,” and the filing read as a “political manifesto.”10CNN. Judge Throws Out Trump’s RICO Lawsuit Against Hillary Clinton and Democrats11Politico. Judge Sanctions Trump, Habba Over Clinton Lawsuit12NPR. Donald Trump Frivolous Lawsuit Fine
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed both the dismissal and the sanctions on November 26, 2025. It held the RICO claims were time-barred: Trump knew or should have known of his alleged injuries by October 2017 but did not sue until 2022, and presidential duties did not toll the clock, since under Clinton v. Jones a president is not immune from civil proceedings. The court also found the underlying claims meritless, much of the challenged conduct being protected speech, and described the amended complaint as a “shotgun pleading” containing “knowingly false factual allegations” and “frivolous legal theories.” One narrow point went Trump’s way: the district court had lacked personal jurisdiction over Orbis, so the panel remanded with instructions to dismiss the claims against that defendant without prejudice rather than with prejudice.13Courthouse News. 11th Circuit Rejects Trump’s Attempt to Revive Hillary Clinton Conspiracy14Justia. Trump v. Clinton, 11th Circuit
The Other Dossier Lawsuits
Trump was not the only person to sue over the memos. The other cases followed a similar arc.
Three Alfa Bank founders, Mikhail Fridman, German Khan, and Petr Aven, sued Steele and Orbis for defamation in D.C. Superior Court. In August 2018 a judge dismissed the suit under D.C.’s anti-SLAPP statute, finding the dossier served the public interest because it concerned possible Russian influence in the 2016 election and that the plaintiffs had not shown Steele acted with malice.15The Atlantic. Christopher Steele’s Victory in a DC Court
The same three men sued Fusion GPS and its founder Glenn Simpson for defamation in a separate action. That case was dismissed with prejudice in March 2022, with each side bearing its own costs.16ABC 33/40. Oligarchs Drop Defamation Lawsuit Over Trump Russia Dossier
Tech executive Aleksej Gubarev and his company Webzilla sued Orbis and Steele for libel in the UK High Court after the dossier tied them to hacking of Democratic Party systems. After a July 2020 trial, Mr. Justice Warby dismissed the claim, holding that Steele had neither intended nor authorized BuzzFeed’s publication and therefore could not be held responsible for that republication. The court confirmed the allegations were “seriously defamatory” and, because Orbis did not argue truth, treated them as false, but the required chain of responsibility for the publication was missing.17Matrix Law. High Court Dismisses Steele Dossier Libel Claim
The one partial win for a claimant came in Aven, Fridman, and Khan’s UK data protection case against Orbis under the Data Protection Act 1998. In July 2020, Mr. Justice Warby found for the claimants on a narrow point involving an allegation of “illicit cash,” ruling that Orbis had not taken reasonable steps to verify that specific claim. Two of the three claimants were awarded £18,000 each.45RB. Aven and Ors v Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd That ruling supplied the template Trump tried to use two years later, without success.
What the Courts Did and Did Not Decide
Across seven years of litigation on two continents, no court has made a factual finding on whether the dossier’s most explosive allegations, including the Moscow hotel claims and the alleged Trump-Kremlin conspiracy, are true or false. The cases turned on other questions: whether data was mishandled, whether a defamation defendant authorized a particular publication, whether a plaintiff sued in time, whether a RICO theory was legally viable, whether pleadings were sanctionable. Trump lost every case he brought. The businessmen who sued lost every case except a narrow data protection finding tied to a single unverified claim about cash. The courts’ silence on truth is itself the result: readers looking to the judgments for a verdict on the dossier’s substance will not find one.