8/16/2023 0 Comments Christopher steele orbisAlfa and its founders have denied engaging in any improper conduct. The dossier goes on to say that Fridman and Aven gave “informal advice to Putin on foreign policy, and especially about the U.S.” throughout 2016, but stopped short of linking Alfa to Russia’s election interference. Steele devoted a small section to outlining what his source-a “trusted compatriot” of a “top level Russian government official”-had described as Alfa’s “close relationship with” Russian President Vladimir Putin and the “significant favors” exchanged between them, including Alfa’s allegedly “illicit” cash deliveries to Putin throughout the 1990s. “The Steele dossier generated so much attention and interest in the United States precisely because its content relates to active public debates here,” Epstein wrote.Īlfa and its founders, Fridman, Aven, and Khan, played a fairly limited role in the dossier. They characterize the document as a scurrilously inaccurate attack funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.Īccording to Epstein, the dossier “as a whole plainly concerns an issue of public interest … because it relates to possible Russian interference within the 2016 election.” Steele has made a similar argument with regard to his decision to pause his coordination with the FBI and brief the media directly on his findings in September and October 2016, according to people familiar with his thinking: While he never intended for the dossier itself to be made public-he has said he was “horrified” when BuzzFeed published it in full-he believed the public had a dire need to know the broad outlines of a potential conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, and the FBI had no plans to make such details known. Trump’s relentless assault on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia as a “witch hunt” begins with the dossier, which the president and congressional Republicans consider the probe’s proximate cause. But his conclusion offered the first authoritative response to questions that have been raised by President Donald Trump’s Republican allies about the propriety of Steele discussing the dossier with reporters prior to the 2016 election. "We will continue to defend against baseless attacks on Chris and his company, Orbis, and hope that the result of this case will be a lesson to those who seek to intimidate Chris and his company.” Alan Lewis, a lawyer representing Alfa Bank’s founders-Mikhail Fridman, German Khan, and Petr Aven-said they “strongly” disagreed with the court’s decision and planned to appeal.Įpstein’s decision in the lawsuit did not consider whether the dossier was accurate or inaccurate. In a statement, Steele’s lawyer Christy Hull Eikhoff told me that they were “thrilled” with the outcome. Steele’s conduct is therefore protected by “anti- SLAPP” statutes, according to the judge, which aim to halt lawsuits brought to chill the exercise of constitutionally protected free speech. Epstein of the Washington, D.C., Superior Court concluded that the author of the dossier, the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, acted “in furtherance of the right of advocacy on issues of public interest” when he decided to brief reporters on the dossier’s findings in the summer of 2016. In his decision to toss the case “with prejudice”-that is, permanently-Judge Anthony C. The author of the explosive dossier outlining the president’s alleged ties to Russia won an important legal victory on Monday, when a judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought against his firm by the co-founders of Russia’s largest private bank.
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