As Donald Trump prepares to live-tweet Joe's Biden's State of the Union address, $382,000 just got added to his growing mound of debt.
According to court documents released on Thursday, a British judge ordered Trump to reimburse the cost of legal fees spent by Orbis Business Intelligence — a company founded by former British spy Christopher Steele — for their defense against a failed lawsuit brought about by the former president over the now infamous “Steele Dossier” commissioned by Democratic consultants before the 2016 presidential election. The suit against Orbis was dismissed in February, with the judge saying that Trump's complaint that Steele authored a number of defamatory memos relating to his ties to Russia was “bound to fail.”
Per reporting by AP News, Orbis said "the report was never meant to be made public and was published by BuzzFeed without the permission of Steele or his company." Part of this report, which Trump argued soiled his reputation, "alleged he had received 'golden showers' from Russian prostitutes, participated in St Petersburg sex parties and had been compromised by the country’s FSB security service," according to The Telegraph. Trump has denied these allegations.
