A federal judge in Florida ordered the release of dozens of documents in the defamation case brought forward by a Russian technology entrepreneur who protested BuzzFeed’s publication of the infamous Trump-Russia dossier.
U.S. District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro, based in Miami, ruled the more than 40 documents from the discovery process, currently under seal, be released by Feb. 8, according to the Daily Caller. That process included the deposition of the dossier’s author, ex-British spy Christopher Steele and those of the founders of Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that hired Steele.
The development comes a little more than a month after BuzzFeed won a legal battle when Ungaro ruled that BuzzFeed was protected by the fair report privilege, even though Russian executive Aleksej Gubarev was explicitly mentioned in the copy of the dossier that was published.
Gubarev took legal action against BuzzFeed after it posted in January 2017 the entire 35-page dossier, a series of memos compiled by Steele. Gubarev, and his company XBT Holdings and its subsidiary Webzilla, were all referenced in the document for allegedly working with the 2016 Trump campaign.
The company was said to be “using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct ‘altering operations’ against the Democratic Party leadership.” Gubarev’s name was later redacted.
BuzzFeed was criticized for publishing the dossier in full, given that it contained unverified details and errors.
BuzzFeed and Fusion GPS were also sued by Trump’s former private lawyer, Michael Cohen, claiming libel as the dossier alleged he traveled to Prague to pay off a Russian hacking job during the 2016 election. However, Cohen dropped those lawsuits last year. Cohen is set to head to federal prison in early March after taking two plea deals last year in two separate federal cases.
A House Intelligence Committee memo released last year, which outlined alleged abuses by the Justice Department and FBI, showed that the FBI used the dossier in obtaining surveillance authority to spy on onetime Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page.
Democrats in the committee put out their own rebuttal memo arguing the FBI would have been “remiss” not to look into someone with suspicious ties to Russia and the dossier was substantiated by additional information.
The GOP memo also found that the FBI didn’t inform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Steele’s anti-Trump bias and that a crucial source of funding for the dossier was Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Naomi Lim contributed to this report.
