Trump committed egregious intelligence breach, ex-British spy tells court

LONDON – Former US president Donald Trump’s decision to declassify evidence given by former British spy Christopher Steele over Trump’s alleged links with Russia led to the disappearance of two sources, Mr Steele said in court documents made public on Tuesday.

Mr Steele said in a witness statement that Trump’s decision to declassify his 2017 testimony to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was “one of the most egregious breaches of intelligence rules and protocol by the United States government in recent times”.

“Two of the named Russian sources have not been seen or heard of since,” the former intelligence officer added.

His witness statement was made public on Tuesday, the day after Trump asked London’s High Court to allow his data protection lawsuit against a British private investigations firm co-founded by Mr Steele to continue.

Trump, 77, the front runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is suing Orbis Business Intelligence over the “Steele dossier” in order to prove its claims were false, he said in his own witness statement.

The dossier, published by the BuzzFeed website in 2017, alleged ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia, and also said the former president engaged in sexual behaviour that gave the Russian authorities material with which to blackmail him.

Many of the allegations were never substantiated and lawyers for Trump said in court filings that the report was “egregiously inaccurate”, while Trump said it contained “numerous false, phoney or made-up allegations”.

Orbis, however, says Trump is bringing the claim simply to address his grievances against the company and Mr Steele.

‘Untrue and disgraceful’

Mr Steele had given evidence in an interview with two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents as part of Mr Mueller’s probe into an alleged conspiracy between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign.

In 2019, Mr Mueller concluded there was no evidence of a criminal conspiracy between the campaign and Russia.

On the last day of his presidency, Trump declassified Mr Steele’s evidence and provided a copy of his testimony to a journalist, Mr Steele said in his statement.

“The publication of this document did serious damage to the US government’s Russian operations and their ability to recruit new Russian sources,” he said.

Mr Steele also said in his witness statement that he believed Trump was “motivated by a personal vendetta against me and Orbis and a desire for revenge”.

He suggested that Trump’s discovery of Mr Steele’s friendship with his daughter Ivanka damaged their relationship and also “deepened his animus towards me and is one of the reasons for his vindictive and vexatious conduct towards me and Orbis”.

In his witness statement, Trump said his daughter was “completely irrelevant to this claim and any mention of her only serves to distract this court from (Orbis’) and Mr Steele’s reckless behaviour”.

“Any inference or allegation that Mr Steele makes about my relationship with my daughter is untrue and disgraceful,” he added. REUTERS