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- cross-posted to:
- politics
- [email protected]
The former president had been seeking to use data protection laws to sue the company run by Christopher Steele but the High Court has thrown out the case.
Mr Steele compiled the dossier which contained unproven allegations about bribing officials and sex parties.
It was leaked to the media just before Mr Trump was sworn in as president.
In bringing the lawsuit against Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, he said the dossier contained allegations that were inaccurate and breached his data protection rights.
In Thursday’s ruling in London, Mrs Justice Steyn DBE said she did not make any judgement on the allegations themselves but found Mr Trump’s claim had not been brought within the six-year limitation period.
Let me do my penance here and acknowledge that there almost certainly was some level of collusion between Trump and Russia running up to the 2016 election. That said, the Steele dossier is National Enquirer level of tabloid bullshit. It’s so divorced from any sort of evidence that I wonder what case Trump could possibly have here even if he met the deadline to file. If I make a bunch of baseless claims about someone I have not violated their privacy.
It’s worth noting that the most salacious allegation from the Steele Dossier was actually confirmed by the Mueller report:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/pee-tape-trump-mueller-report-823755/
"According to the report, on October 30th, 2016, Trump’s private attorney and fixer Michael Cohen received a text from a Russian businessman involved in the Trump Tower Moscow deal, in progress for more than a year. “Stopped flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else. Just so you know….” Giorgi Rtskhiladze wrote to Cohen. Cohen told investigators he spoke to Trump about the issue after receiving the texts from Rtskhiladze.
Rtskhiladze later admitted he had been told the tapes were fake, but he did not communicate that to Cohen, the report says.
Rtskhiladze’s description of the tapes’ content tracks with the unverified information included in the Steele dossier, which claimed that Trump watched Russian prostitutes urinate in a Moscow hotel room in 2013. “Rtskhiladze said ‘tapes’ referred to compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group, which had helped host the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Russia.”"
What am I missing here?
ETA: What I’m saying is if the tapes were fake how could they have been used as blackmail. For blackmail to be effective you need to prove it exists.
The tapes are real, the content of the tapes are fake.
The Mueller report specifically concludes that they could not find evidence of collusion. It did find clear evidence of Russia trying to influence the election in favor of Trump, but no collusion from the Trump campaign with Russia in this effort. Given what we know about the general competency of Trump and his campaign how likely would it be that he was capable of hiding collusion from the full force of the FBI?
Mueller report also documented many cases of obstruction, the reason they couldn’t come to a conclusion, and was hamstringed by not being allowed to look into finances. Also Trump is on record saying he fired Comey for that Russia thing because it was made up (of course Trump never lies). So it seems he was capable in some capacity. Also having the boss of the people who are doing the investigation on your side never hurts, why do you think it was shut down soon after Barr was appointed?
Yeah you’re right that there is nothing definitive. I’ve always found Manafort’s actions to be the most suspicious though. Maybe “almost certainly” is too presumptive.