WASHINGTON _ An intriguing multinational game of legal chess is unfolding as lawsuits move forward on both sides of the Atlantic over the publication of a controversial dossier that has dogged the Trump administration.
Lawyers for Russian-born internet mogul Aleksej Gubarev's company, XBT Holdings, are advancing in a U.S. lawsuit against online news site BuzzFeed, even as a separate legal team for Gubarev pursues a lawsuit in London against ex-British spy Christopher Steele.
Steele is the author of the dossier, whose findings included explosive allegations of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in last year's elections.
The 35-page dossier, which also contains a salacious description of one of Trump's trips to Moscow, became international news when published by BuzzFeed in January. Soon after came word of multiple investigations.
Gubarev sued BuzzFeed because the dossier alleged that Russia's government had compromising information and coerced him into cyber efforts to manipulate the U.S. election via his U.S. companies XBT and Webzilla _ claims that Gubarev denies. He contends that BuzzFeed didn't give him the opportunity to refute the uncorroborated information. Trump too has blasted the dossier as phony.
By week's end, Gubarev's attorneys are expected to ask British courts to compel Steele to give a sworn deposition to be used in the defamation lawsuit in South Florida, where one of Gubarev's Webzilla is located. A federal judge in Miami late Tuesday ruled against Steele in his bid to quash that request.
Steele claimed to the judge that his deposition would jeopardize his British case. He also stipulated that he did not believe U.S. courts had jurisdiction over him, arguing Britain has different rules governing depositions in British cases.
The U.S. suit alleges defamation by the online news site, not Steele.
U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro denied Steele's request, "trusting that his rights under British law will be protected by the British Court."
And that's put a spring in the step of Gubarev's legal team.
"The Florida corporation, Webzilla, that is suing him here is not part of the U.K. lawsuit (against Steele). We have explicitly said that here in the U.S. _ we are not seeking damages that the U.K. lawsuit is seeking," Valentin Gurvits, lead U.S. attorney for Gubarev, told McClatchy. "We definitely will not use the testimony we obtain in his deposition in the U.K."
A BuzzFeed spokesman declined to comment. Lawyers for the news site in June sought subpoenas to compel testimony from the former heads of the CIA, FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Gubarev's lawyers have via subpoena also sought to compel a statement from Fusion GPS, the political research group in Washington, D.C., that paid Steele for his some of his investigative work in compiling the dossier. Fusion's co-founder Glenn Simpson was also threatened with a subpoena by the Senate Judiciary Committee to compel him to appear. The committee later agreed to have him provide private testimony, Politico reported in July.
Steele's dossier amounted to private business intelligence that was not intended for publication. But it did circulate in government and media circles last year during and after the presidential campaign. McClatchy reported exclusively in July that British court documents showed Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was briefed on the circulating dossier by Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow.
