OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The High Court in London dismissed former President Donald Trump’s data protection lawsuit against a private investigation firm based in the United Kingdom. The lawsuit pertained to a dossier that purported to have connections between Trump’s campaign and Russia.
In response to allegations made in a dossier by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent and Orbis co-founder, Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, sued Orbis Business Intelligence, Reuters reported.
Judge Karen Steyn ruled in writing that “there are no compelling reasons to allow the claim to proceed to trial,” effectively ending the prosecution of the former US president, according to Reuters.
Trump claimed in a witness statement from October that he started the lawsuit to disprove claims in the controversial Steele dossier—which BuzzFeed released in 2017—that he had engaged in “perverted sexual acts” in Russia.
The report, according to Trump’s legal team, is “egregiously inaccurate” and includes “numerous false, phony, or made-up allegations,” many of which were never tested. Orbis retorted that Trump’s “longstanding grievances” against Steele and the company were the only reasons he filed the claim.
Not only is Trump embroiled in the London lawsuit, but there are four separate criminal prosecutions against him in the United States.
There is no longer a public calendar entry for the start date of Trump’s federal 2020 election obstruction trial.
Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, initially scheduled the trial for March 4. Trump has entered a not-guilty plea to four charges stemming from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the circumstances leading up to the attack on January 6.
Most expected that the proceedings would start later than expected, though, because the case is now on hold while the D.C. Circuit decides whether Trump should be immune from prosecution because the charges against him pertain to his time in office.
It is uncertain when the three-judge panel at the appeals court will render a decision, despite hearing arguments on January 9, regarding whether the former president can invoke absolute immunity to dismiss Smith’s case.
As initially reported by The Washington Post, it has now been disclosed that the federal court in Washington, D.C., has removed the March 4 trial date from its public calendar. This administrative action suggests that the trial will be postponed while the immunity appeal process is underway.
“Donald Trump’s March 4 trial on election fraud charges has been dropped from the court calendar. In December, Judge Tanya Chutkan agreed to freeze the case while Trump appealed the indictment on presidential immunity grounds. Its removal from the court calendar signals that the case will likely not begin for several more months, pushing it closer to the presidential election in November. The Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals is now considering the case, and it will likely go to the U.S. Supreme Court after that,” Newsweek reported.
Soon after the update was reported on social media, several political figures speculated that the removal of the March 4 trial date from the public calendar meant that the case would be dropped entirely.
Bill Shipley, a lawyer for defendants accused of involvement in the Capitol riot, responded by calling it “idiotic” to believe that Smith’s case would be dropped.
“Tomorrow was the day the Juror questionnaires were supposed to be returned to the Court by prospective jurors and given to the parties. Was a questionnaire ever prepared? No—the case has been stayed. So no questionnaires will be received,” Shipley posted on X.
“One of the first questions is ‘Do you have any plans that would make it impossible for you to be a juror from March 3 to May 3?’ Well, you can’t send that out until you know what the start date will be,” he added. “So all you supposedly ‘in the know’ X-sters, just stop posting nonsensical conspiracy theories about why the Court—NOT JACK SMITH—removed the trial from the March 4 calendar.”
