NEWS website BuzzFeed suffered a legal setback today over the scope of evidence due to be given by a former British spy who prepared a dossier on alleged links between Donald Trump and Russia.

Russian businessman Aleksej Gubarev is suing BuzzFeed in the United States after it published the entirety of the dossier, which includes several documents produced by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele or his company Orbis Business Intelligence.

The dossier alleges that Mr Gubarev’s companies XBT and Webzilla “had been using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct ‘alerting operations’ against the Democratic Party leadership.”

It also alleges that Mr Gubraev was “recruited under duress by the FSB,” Russia’s Federal Security Bureau. He denies all the allegations.

Mr Steele, who is also being sued by Mr Gubarev in London, is due to give evidence in the Florida proceedings next month after the High Court previously ruled that he had relevant evidence to give and there would be no breach of his human rights.

He had told the court that he was “horrified and remains horrified” that BuzzFeed published the dossier without significant redaction, which he claims could have put his sources’ “lives, their families and their livelihoods at risk.”

He admits providing the dossier to US Senator John McCain and “a senior UK government national security official,” as well as to Fusion GPS, the consultancy which commissioned the investigation, but says he provided it to no-one else.

Yesterday, Mr Justice Jay dismissed BuzzFeed’s request for Mr Steele to be asked about the steps he took to obtain information for the dossier, his preparation for the dossier and his solicitation of information for it.