A federal judge in Florida on Wednesday ordered the public release of dozens of documents kept under seal during BuzzFeed’s lawsuit over the Steele dossier.
From Daily Caller:
District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro ordered the documents be made public by Feb. 8. More than 40 records used in the case are listed in the order.
Ungaro’s decision will shed light into the discovery process during the defamation case, which included depositions with dossier author Christopher Steele and the founders of Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that hired Steele.
Ungaro ruled in BuzzFeed’s favor Dec. 19, 2018. The website was sued in February 2017 by Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian tech executive accused in the dossier of using his web hosting companies to hack into the Democratic National Committee’s computer systems.
Gubarev vehemently denied the allegation, which Steele made in a memo dated Dec. 13, 2016. The memo was the last of 17 memos that compile what is known as the dossier. BuzzFeed published the dossier Jan. 10, 2017.
BuzzFeed apologized to Gubarev after the lawsuit was filed and redacted his name from the copy of the dossier posted to its website. But the website hired a private investigator — a former FBI and National Security Council official named Anthony Ferrante — to uncover evidence to support its legal defense.
