A U.S. District court judge has put a former British spy one step closer to facing questions under oath about the controversial dossier he authored alleging President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign team plotted with Russian agents.
A ruling by Judge Ursula Ungaro allows lawyers for a Russian technology executive named in the dossier to seek British approval to question onetime MI6 agent Christopher Steele about the funding and sourcing of the dossier under oath. The request was made as part of a libel suit brought by Webzilla CEO Aleksej Gubarev against the website Buzzfeed, which was first to publish the dossier Steele prepared.
“I suspect that I’ll be the first to speak to him,” Gubarev’s attorney, Valentin Gurvits, told ABC News this week. “I know that he is trying very hard to prevent that from happening.”
The potential interview with Steele is part of a widening effort to pierce the secrecy surrounding the now infamous dossier that raised the first questions about then-candidate Trump’s ties to Russia. The 35-page document contains a range of unverified allegations – some of which have been discredited – laying out a history of ties between several Trump associates and Russia operatives. It also levels salacious claims about Trump’s own behavior during a visit to Moscow in 2013 – claims Trump later refuted and denounced during a Jan. 11 news conference.
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