Trump loses again, but with big differences this time.

People who are interested in stopping a dictatorship in America will remember the name “Christopher Steele”. Here’s Wikipedia’s opening paragraph about him:

British former intelligence officer with the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1987 until his retirement in 2009. He ran the Russia desk at MI6 headquarters in London between 2006 and 2009. In 2009, he co-founded Orbis Business Intelligence, a London-based private intelligence firm.

It sounds pretty impressive to me. Steele was hired as a consultant by the Hilary Clinton campaign for opposition information about Trump. (Republicans hired Steele for the same thing before Hillary’s people hired him.) When I was a salary slave, I hired consultants (under pressure from higher management). We used to say that a consultant was somebody who would borrow your watch to tell you the time of day …  and then keep the watch.

But Steele made some blockbuster claims, perhaps because the version published was still a work in progress and Steele didn’t intend for it to be the final version. The Trump machine went to work anyway, calling Steele all sorts of names and claiming that it was lies, all lies. Trump allies started beating the drums and claiming that the FBI investigation of Russian Interference started because of Steele’s very bad lies. But Trump adviser George Papadopoulos had already reached some of the same conclusions as Steele and even the Republican controlled House Intelligence Committee agreed that the FBI investigation was started by information from Papadopoulos. You should read the Wikipedia articles! They’re long, detailed, and full of references.

Steele himself, being a British citizen and a veteran intelligence officer, wasn’t concerned very much by being called bad names. But Trump attacked him in the British court system so he had to defend himself.

The press is now reporting that Trump has lost another one. With indignation and high dudgeon, Trump sued Steele with making false “shocking and scandalous claims” that harmed his reputation. Specifically, two memos in the dossier which claimed he had taken part in “sex parties” while in St Petersburg and engaged in “golden showers” with prostitutes in Moscow. These allegations remain unproven. One potential benefit of pushing Putin over the edge might be that we will get the real truth here. I can hardly wait!

Anyway …

A British court has now ruled against Trump. (In 2022, a US federal judge in Florida dismissed a Trump lawsuit against Steele.) I’ve lost track of how many times Trump has lost in court but it’s well over 60. I believe this has the distinction of being the only international defeat for Trump, but that isn’t the headline.

The British court has also ruled that Trump has to pay Steele’s legal expenses to fight the case. Some $382,000, according to the Manchester Guardian. Just in time for all the other financial penalties in the US. That still isn’t the headline.

The headline is that, according to the BBC, “The order … also said Mr Trump has made no attempt to bring an appeal.” What!!??? No appeal? Zut Alors and eine völlige Überraschung!

I guess Trump realizes that dragging his feet with appeal after appeal won’t help in Britain.