"British court rules against Christopher Steele ..." just the news

"Justice Mark Warby of the High Court of England and Wales ordered Steele’s firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, to pay a modest 18,000 English pounds – about $22,596 in American currency – each to Petr Aven and Mikhail Fridman as compensation for a violation of Britain’s Data Protection Act 1998 .

Warby ruled that while Steele had a national security interest to share his intelligence with U.S. and British authorities, several of the allegations in Memo 112 of the Steele dossier were “inaccurate or misleading as a matter of fact.”" just the news

*********

"The judge ruled that in Memo 112, one of several that made up Steele's dossier, there were six factually inaccurate or unproven claims that Steele provided from his alleged intelligence sources including that:

• the businessmen did not do favors for or receive favors from Putin as the memo claimed;
• Fridman and Aven did not provide informal foreign policy advice to the Russian leader as Steele alleged;
• Fridman did not meet with Putin in September 2016 as claimed by Steele's source;
• the businessman did not bribe Putin when he was Deputy Mayor of St Petersburg;And Fridman and Aven did not do Putin’s political bidding as the dossier alleged." just the news

**********

"The ruling further accentuates that much of the Steele dossier contained unproven Internet rumor or false information, some possible from Russian intelligence, as the Justice Department inspector general concluded last December. Nonetheless, the FBI used evidence from Steele's dossier to support a warrant targeting Trump campaign figures in four occasions, claiming to the court that agents had verified the information.'  just the news

*****

"The judge also concluded that Steele's notes of his first interaction with the FBI about the dossier on July 5, 2016 made clear that his ultimate client for his research project was Hillary Clinton's campaign as directed by her campaign law firm Perkins Coie. The FBI did not disclose that information to the court.

"The supposition that the Clinton campaign was the ultimate client "is in line with the FBI Note of 5 July 2016, which records Mr. Steele telling the FBI that Orbis had been instructed by Mr. [Glenn] Simpson of Fusion and 'Democratic Party Associates' but that 'the ultimate client were (sic) the leadership of the Clinton presidential campaign.' The FBI Note also indicates that Mr Steele had been told by that stage that Mrs Clinton herself was aware of what Orbis had been commissioned to do," Warby concluded." just the news

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Justice Sir Mark Warby is, I take it, something like a SCOTUS justice in the US.   His decision makes it clear that the "Steele Dossier" is a work of fiction constructed by Steele for the express purpose of helping Clinton defeat Trump.

For this to have taken so much time to emerge indicates to me that the present FBI director is neither loyal to President Trump  nor to the truth.  Who is the idiot or political enemy who suggested him as FBI Director to Trump.  Pence maybe?  No, it was Chris Christie.  pl

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/british-court-rules-against-christopher-steele-orders

Comments

[Harry]

I noticed the story. Not that any of that is proof. But I think in this case the burden of proof was on Mr. Steel and he failed to meet it.

In looking at the damages, I think Mr. Steele got off very lightly, which makes sense for someone who was probably carrying water only after having been given explicit permission to carry that water by the British intelligence elite.

I remember Chris Steele from college. His hair was always impeccable.

[BillWade]

I've heard informally that AG Barr is wanting to hold the Durham investigation past election so as not to interfere in it. I hope this isn't true.

[fakebot]

Could it have been Chris Christie? He led Trump's transition team at one stage.

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/07/trump-fbi-director-nominee-christopher-wray-239238

Wray acted as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s personal attorney during the federal investigation into lane closures leading to the George Washington Bridge that were put in place by members of Christie’s administration as political retribution for a mayor who did not support Christie’s reelection campaign.

...

Chris Christie said last week he thought Wray “would provide great leadership at the FBI,” though he declined to say whether he had recommended him to the president. The two met when Christie was a U.S. attorney in New Jersey and Wray was at the Justice Department. They collaborated on a criminal investigation into the accounting practices of Bristol-Myers Squibb.

[plantman]

So the Steele Dossier was fake, just like many similar smear campaigns.

But who decided to use it after the election to attack Trump?
I don't think Comey, Clapper or even Obama led the charge.

That leaves Brennan, the most likely suspect in this case.

I just hope Durham has the guts to expose these creeps.

[haiku222]

> According to the company’s last financial account, [2] there isn’t enough money to pay the legal bills. Steele’s business is bust.

http://johnhelmer.net/the-reputation-of-mikhail-fridman-and-pyotr-aven-is-worth-18000-each-but-it-cost-sixteen-times-that-much-to-defend-enough-to-bankrupt-christopher-steele/print/

[johnf]

The Daily Mail (print edition) recently splashed all over its front page that Christopher Steele has now produced another "dossier" claiming that a lot of Britain's top influential people, including politicians, are being bribed by the Chinese company Huawei to support Huawei's involvement in the construction of Britain's 5G.

The BBC reports on the Mail story:

"For its main story, the Daily Mail says the diplomatic war over Huawei's involvement in Britain's 5G network has taken an extraordinary twist, after a dossier accused China of trying to manipulate key establishment figures in the UK to back the telecoms giant.

It says the report, commissioned by a New York film producer, names several prominent individuals, claiming the aim was to make them China's "useful idiots".

The paper says those identified in the report have issued statements strenuously denying knowledge of or involvement in any such operation.

A Huawei spokesman is quoted as saying the company categorically rejects the unfounded allegations, which it says are the latest in a long-running American campaign against it."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-53315418

(A New York film producer????)

Looks as though MI6/CIA are abandoning Steele and Orbis as the Russia-gate scam collapses.

Wonder if the other Orbis-involved fake, Skripal and the Salisbury poisonings, is also doomed?

Salisbury and Russia-gate are also probably linked through the figure of Skripal.

[Keith Harbaugh]

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/trump-says-the-jurys-still-out-on-fbi-director-christopher-wray-blames-rod-rosenstein-for-his-appointment/

“Recommended by Chris Christie, right?” Kilmeade asked, to which President Trump replied,
“He was recommended by Chris, but he was appointed by… he was really recommended by Rod Rosenstein and Chris said, ‘Fine, let’s see what happens with him.'”

[Keith Harbaugh]

For more on how the Steele dossier was disseminated, see
https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/10/christopher-steele-court-case-exposes-shady-new-spygate-dirt/
by Margot Cleveland.

[TV]

Chris Wray - another swamp empty suit.
Barr and Durham - 2 more swamp creatures in sheep's clothing.
Ultimately the swamp wins with the support of the small but very loud America haters and the consent of the vast majority of ignorant voters.

[blue peacock]

Col. Lang,

Does it matter who recommended Wray & Rosenstein & Bolton and Mattis & Kelley? Why is Wray still the FBI Director when it is now known that he has "hidden" exculpatory information in the Flynn case?

When does the buck stop at POTUS Trump's desk?

[johnf]

Steele seems to be getting more desperate.

According to The Guardian - a pro-Russia-gate paper - his 2016 "revelations" about Trump being a Putin glove pupper were at first greeted enthusiastically by then Prime Minister Theresa May and then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson but then quickly dropped by them - presumably as soon as Trump was elected.

According to a book about to be brought out by the notorious Guardian neo-con propagandist Luke Harding, in 2018 Steele presented to a parliamentary committee a paper in which he suggested that senior British politicians had grown too close to Putin and were pushing for more conciliatory trade deals with Russia. Johnson has refused to publish the committee's report.

He has since gone on to suggest that a lot of senior British politicians are working - wittingly or unwittingly - for the Chinese over Huawei.

Meanwhile the committee's parliamentiary report cannot be released until its Intelligence Committee OKs its publication. To stop this, Johnson wants to appoint a known idiot, Chris Grayling, to chair the committee and presumably can the report.

The publication of Luke Harding's book - on how the heroic Steele's dossiers have been been suppressed (including Putin fixing the Brexit vote) - is due out next week and will presumably be used to create an outcry against Johnson and Trump.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/22/boris-johnson-theres-may-ignored-claims-russia-had-likely-hold-over-donald-trump-ex-spy-christopher-steele-claims

Meanwhile, according to the Daily Mail, Trump is calling for the extradition of Steele.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8513065/Donald-Trump-calls-ex-MI6-spy-Russia-dossier-extradited.html

Murkier and murkier.

[Ghost Ship]

"Mr. Steele got off very lightly"

Nah, unless Steele had paid an amount in excess of the damages awarded to the plaintiffs into court (which he didn't) he's also liable for the plaintiffs' costs which with expensive barristers (lawyers who can plead in court) may run to a few million pounds.

Also, High Court is the second tier of the court system in England and Wales below the Court of Appeal. England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland each has a separate court system, with the recently created Supreme Court now being the top tier for all three systems

[johnf]

"Russian tech exec sues Steele Dossier author in UK court

A Russian tech entrepreneur on Monday began a defamation claim against the British author of a controversial report at the heart of 2016 US election meddling allegations first leaked to BuzzFeed.

Alexej Gubarev said in documents released in London's High Court that former UK intelligence officer Christopher Steele was responsible for the US news site's January 2017 publication of his dossier.

Some of its findings were used by special counsel Robert Mueller to conduct his own investigation that found evidence of Russian interference but no collusion with Donald Trump's team.

Both Gubarev and Steele attended the opening hearing but did not give evidence on Monday. Buzzfeed is not a defendant in the case.

...The claim said it expected the damages to be capped by the court at £325,000 ($410,000, 358,000 euros).

Steele and his company said they had nothing to do with Buzzfeed's "unauthorised online publication"."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russian-tech-exec-sues-steele-dossier-author-in-uk-court/ar-BB16YppJ