CEO of Russia's XBT, which owns Webzilla and invested in Prisma app, sues BuzzFeed for posting Trump dossier; BuzzFeed has now redacted CEO's name from dossier
Jose Pagliery / CNNMoney :
Context & Ripple Effects
The dossier tying Trump to Russia named Aleksej Gubarev — CEO of Russia's XBT, the holding company behind hosting firm Webzilla and an early backer of the Prisma photo app — and BuzzFeed published it unredacted alongside its reporting. Within a day, Gubarev filed suit against BuzzFeed, and the outlet stripped his name from the posted document, an unusually fast retreat that signals how exposed publishers felt running unverified allegations.
The case became a template fight over whether republishing leaked intelligence material is protected journalism: nearly two years later, a district court judge ruled for BuzzFeed under the fair report privilege. It also landed amid a wave of litigation by people who claimed Russian-tie allegations damaged them, including Shervin Pishevar's defamation suit against an opposition research firm.
First-order effects
- BuzzFeed immediately redacted Gubarev's name from the dossier it had posted, conceding legal pressure while keeping the underlying document live.
- Gubarev's companies — XBT, Webzilla, and by association its Prisma investment — are thrust into the Trump-Russia story, forcing a private hosting executive into public reputational defense.
Second-order effects
- Other publishers weighing republication of raw opposition-research documents now price in lawsuit risk, pushing outlets toward redaction-first handling of unverified names.
- The suit joins a broader playbook of subjects fighting alleged Russian-tie claims in court rather than through statements — a pattern Pishevar followed weeks later against his accuser.
Third-order effects
- The eventual fair-report-privilege ruling in BuzzFeed's favor establishes that republishing official investigative material can be legally shielded even when the underlying claims are unproven — a durable precedent for how outlets handle leaked dossiers.
- Litigation as a response to damaging coverage hardens into standard practice on all sides, culminating in moves like Trump Media's $1.5B suit against 20 outlets over a single reported loss figure.
The trend: Defamation suits are becoming the default counter-move to explosive but unverified published allegations, with courts' application of reporter-privilege doctrines deciding where publishers' freedom to republish ends.