Donald Trump is suing a former MI6 officer and the intelligence consultancy he founded, United Kingdom High Court records show.

The former US president is bringing a data protection claim against Orbis Business Intelligence and its founder Christopher Steele, who previously ran the Secret Intelligence Service’s Russia desk.

According to a court order published on Thursday, a two-day hearing in Trump’s legal action is set to start on October 16, which is thought to be the first hearing in the claim.

No other details of the case have been made available but Trump is not expected to attend.

Steele was the author of the so-called Steele dossier, which included unsubstantiated allegations that Trump had been “compromised” by the Russian security service FSB.

The dossier, leaked to BuzzFeed in 2017, also alleged that Russian President Vladimir Putin “supported and directed” an operation to “cultivate” Trump as a presidential candidate for “at least five years”.

Trump denied the claims.

Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence were previously sued for libel by Russian citizen Aleksej Gubarev over the publication of the dossier, claiming they were legally responsible for BuzzFeed publishing the dossier.

However, in a judgment in October 2020, Justice Warby dismissed the claim.