Left: File photo dated 04/05/23 of former U.S. President Donald Trump; Right: File photo dated 7/3/2017 of Christopher Steele, the former MI6 officer who wrote a report on alleged links to Russia. (Press Association via AP Images); Inset center: Hillary Clinton at an event in New York City on Sept. 19, 2022. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Attorneys representing the private intelligence company owned by former British spy Christopher Steele have accused former president Donald Trump of using the legal process to lodge an increasingly “fanciful” series of political attacks.
In turn, Orbis Business Intelligence is requesting damages, “double costs,” and attorney’s fees over what they complain is a “baseless” effort to keep them in a long-running private racketeering (RICO) lawsuit the 45th president originally filed against Hillary Clinton.
The landscape in the litigation journey has taken a number of pitstops, sideways departures, and veering turns — but they all seem to be heading in the same direction.
In 2022, Trump sued Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., former FBI Director James Comey, former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, and several others, alleging a RICO scheme in which they targeted then-candidate Trump. The case was dismissed in September 2023, and Trump was subject to sanctions of roughly $1 million because the case should never have been brought to begin with, U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks, a Bill Clinton appointee, ruled. The judge found that Trump’s lawsuit was nothing more than “a deliberate attempt to harass” a former political rival and those he perceived as enemies.
Then came the appeals.
In February of this year, Trump asked the 11th Circuit to toss the costly sanctions against him, arguing they were inapplicable and that the district court “abused its discretion” because he was never afforded the chance to remedy any of the various deficiencies in his claims.
In June, Clinton and Orbis filed their own replies to the appeal.
In those filings, the appellees variously argued the RICO lawsuit should finally and forever be bounced from the legal system — or that, in any event, the respective parties should be removed from the litigation — and that the sanctions award entered by the district court against Trump and his attorneys “was proper” and should stand.
Trump filed a joint response to Clinton and Orbis in July.
Now, Steele’s company has fired back once again.
The sharply-worded second reply contains variations of a theme: repeatedly accusing Trump and his attorneys of fundamentally misunderstanding how the relevant law on point works.
“Orbis is a unique party to this litigation insofar as it is the sole foreign party, and accordingly, using Trump’s own argument to the trial court, jurisdiction over it by the Florida federal court could only have been obtained through Florida’s long-arm statute or the RICO nationwide service provision,” the motion reads. “Orbis has singularly brought this Motion because of the frivolous appeal as to it given its unique situation, notwithstanding the utter lack of a legal or factual basis for Trump’s remaining arguments on appeal.”
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And, Trump knows his legal arguments are not going anywhere in legal terms, Steele’s company claims, but that’s not the point.
“Trump contends that upon establishing jurisdiction under RICO, the district court would revisit its analysis of the Florida long-arm statute,” the filing goes on. “However, arguing that the district court will revisit his Florida long-arm statute claim while continuing to plead the same defective claims demonstrates that Trump’s goal is not to obtain any legitimate legal redress of harm, but to file knowingly groundless claims in order to weaponize legal process against a [sic] Orbis. Indeed, Trump brings nothing new to this argument.”
The heart of the dispute, as Orbis sees it, is that Trump never served the company in the United States — but rather in London — as the U.S. Rules of Civil Procedure demand. Additionally, the company argues, they were improperly included in Trump’s appeal after the district court ruled they had never been properly included in the lawsuit in the first place. Finally, Orbis says, they did not waive any of those issues but rather “both permitted and required to address” the ongoing deficiencies in the arguments leveled by the former president.
“Orbis is not challenging the effect of properly utilizing a nationwide service of process provision,” the second reply continues. “Rather, Orbis is arguing that Trump did not properly utilize a nationwide service of process where it did not serve Orbis in this nation. By attempting to serve Orbis in London, despite the dictates of the statute that it be served in the United States, the assertion that Trump will serve Orbis in another state is as remote as the assertion that Trump will state a RICO claim based on these facts.”
On top of this, the company complains, Trump’s latest filing goes beyond procedural matters and “[i]n a final effort to deflect from his conduct in bringing a frivolous appeal, Trump attempts to argue the unproven allegations of his amended complaint.”
All this, combined, Orbis argues, is a pattern of bad and intentionally bad behavior that supports additional sanctions on Trump.
“Orbis remains focus[ed] on the issue upon which it moved — in a vexatious manner, Trump brought a frivolous appeal against it. Because Trump has not shown he did not, double costs remain warranted,” the filing concludes. “Orbis, respectfully requests that this Court award damages and double costs pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 38 and enter an Order for relief, including, but not limited to, an award of attorney’s fees.”
Brandi Buchman contributed to this report.
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