Does Chief Justice Roberts’s jurisdiction extend to the UK? Asking for the sitting president, who appears to think SCOTUS’s presidential crimes permission slip is good worldwide.
A year ago, Judge Karen Steyn flushed President Trump’s libel suit against former MI6 agent Chris Steele and his company Orbis Business Intelligence over the “Pee Dossier.”
“In reality, the Claimant is seeking court findings to vindicate his reputation in circumstances where has not been able to formulate any viable remedy which he would have a real prospect of obtaining, or which would itself be of any utility; and having chosen to allow many years to elapse – without any attempt to vindicate his reputation in this jurisdiction – since he was first made aware of the Dossier (including the Memoranda) on 6 January 2017, and since he first knew the identity of the author on 11 January 2017,” she wrote.
And because the UK litigation is “loser pay,” she “concluded that the Defendant should have summary judgment in respect of his claim for compensation/damages and a compliance order, and consequently on the claim as a whole.” Which meant that Trump was on the hook for £290,000 in legal fees to Steele and Orbis.
Unsurprisingly, Trump has refused to pay. But he did come up with a somewhat surprising justification.
According to The Guardian, Orbis’s counsel Mark Friston told the court that Trump was asserting “sovereign immunity” and claiming that any collection action would be “completely hopeless.”
This would be a bizarre statement in an American court — even with this Supreme Court, a sitting president is liable to a new civil claim, as well as to a suit to enforce a judgment entered before he returned to office. (Just ask E. Jean Carroll.) But perhaps Trump’s assertion of lèse-majesté is less a statement of law than a challenge. He thinks he’s a sovereign, and what is some English judge gonna do about it, really?
This has, however, left his lawyers in a bit of a sticky wicket.
“It’s difficult to get instructions when your client is president of the free world and trying to turn everything upside down,” his attorney Jacqueline Perry told Judge Jason Rowley. “This isn’t high in his area of importance.”
She protested that her client was “an innocent party in this,” sadly led astray by his former counsel, who bollixed the case and made a dog’s breakfast of it. And so, she hoped that the court would withhold execution of the judgment until after the malpractice claim is sorted, at which point Trump would be prepared to enter into negotiations over Orbis’s fee.
Sadly, no.
Judge Rowley informed Perry that, should her client fail to remit the £290,000 forthwith, he’d forfeit the right to contest the fees at all.
No doubt Chief Justice Roberts and his fellow conservative are inking up their quills to tell those wig-headed limeys where to stick it.
Trump has refused to pay £290,000 in legal fees after case dismissed in UK, court told [The Guardian]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
The post Trump Blows Off UK Pee Tape Judgment: I’m King George Now appeared first on Above the Law.
Does Chief Justice Roberts’s jurisdiction extend to the UK? Asking for the sitting president, who appears to think SCOTUS’s presidential crimes permission slip is good worldwide.
A year ago, Judge Karen Steyn flushed President Trump’s libel suit against former MI6 agent Chris Steele and his company Orbis Business Intelligence over the “Pee Dossier.”
“In reality, the Claimant is seeking court findings to vindicate his reputation in circumstances where has not been able to formulate any viable remedy which he would have a real prospect of obtaining, or which would itself be of any utility; and having chosen to allow many years to elapse – without any attempt to vindicate his reputation in this jurisdiction – since he was first made aware of the Dossier (including the Memoranda) on 6 January 2017, and since he first knew the identity of the author on 11 January 2017,” she wrote.
And because the UK litigation is “loser pay,” she “concluded that the Defendant should have summary judgment in respect of his claim for compensation/damages and a compliance order, and consequently on the claim as a whole.” Which meant that Trump was on the hook for £290,000 in legal fees to Steele and Orbis.
Unsurprisingly, Trump has refused to pay. But he did come up with a somewhat surprising justification.
According to The Guardian, Orbis’s counsel Mark Friston told the court that Trump was asserting “sovereign immunity” and claiming that any collection action would be “completely hopeless.”
This would be a bizarre statement in an American court — even with this Supreme Court, a sitting president is liable to a new civil claim, as well as to a suit to enforce a judgment entered before he returned to office. (Just ask E. Jean Carroll.) But perhaps Trump’s assertion of lèse-majesté is less a statement of law than a challenge. He thinks he’s a sovereign, and what is some English judge gonna do about it, really?
This has, however, left his lawyers in a bit of a sticky wicket.
“It’s difficult to get instructions when your client is president of the free world and trying to turn everything upside down,” his attorney Jacqueline Perry told Judge Jason Rowley. “This isn’t high in his area of importance.”
She protested that her client was “an innocent party in this,” sadly led astray by his former counsel, who bollixed the case and made a dog’s breakfast of it. And so, she hoped that the court would withhold execution of the judgment until after the malpractice claim is sorted, at which point Trump would be prepared to enter into negotiations over Orbis’s fee.
Sadly, no.
Judge Rowley informed Perry that, should her client fail to remit the £290,000 forthwith, he’d forfeit the right to contest the fees at all.
No doubt Chief Justice Roberts and his fellow conservative are inking up their quills to tell those wig-headed limeys where to stick it.
Trump has refused to pay £290,000 in legal fees after case dismissed in UK, court told [The Guardian]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
