Trump and Ivanka's relationship was 'severely damaged' after he found out she was friends with Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent says

• A former MI6 agent said his friendship with Ivanka Trump hurt her relationship with her dad.
• Their relationship was "severely damaged" by the revelation, Christopher Steele said Tuesday.

Former President Donald Trump's relationship with his daughter Ivanka broke down "severely" when the somewhat awkward news emerged that she had an undisclosed friendship with Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent said on Tuesday.

Steele made the remarks in a witness statement as part of legal proceedings in London, where Trump is suing Steele's intelligence company over the now notorious dossier on Trump that Steele wrote in 2016, The Associated Press reported.

Trump, for his part, rejected Steele's testimony, including the comments about his daughter.

The former commander in chief has accused Orbis Business Intelligence, Steele's company, of violating UK data-protection laws with the dossier, which included many salacious allegations of compromising encounters between Trump and Russian figures.

Trump has always denied its contents, and some of its findings have not held up to scrutiny, Insider's Sonam Sheth previously reported.

The dossier was closely examined by the FBI as part of its Trump-Russia probe. Those efforts were themselves put under scrutiny in a 2019 investigation by the Justice Department's inspector general, Michael Horowitz.

Steele's testimony in that investigation brought forward numerous unexpected details — including his long-standing friendship with the younger Trump.

The elder Trump has referred to Steele as a "Trump hater," Vanity Fair reported in 2019. But Steele said he told the Justice Department at the time that it was quite the opposite.

"I informed them that I had in fact had a friendship and professional relationship with Ivanka Trump ... for several years," Steele said in his statement on Tuesday, .

The Guardian reported in 2019 that Steele and the younger Trump had a friendship dating back decades and that Steele had even gifted her a "family tartan from Scotland."

The Office of the Inspector General's report on the investigation said Steele told investigators that "if anything he was 'favorably disposed' toward the Trump family."

He even visited a family member — whom ABC News later identified as the younger Trump — at Trump Tower, the report said.

But in his witness statement on Tuesday, Steele said that this had led to trouble with the then-president.

"My understanding is that Ms Trump had not disclosed our relationship to her father," Steele said, according to The Times.

When Trump found out, it "severely damaged their relationship," he added.

Steele attributed much of what he called Trump's "vindictive and vexatious conduct" toward him to Trump's rage over that friendship, The Times reported.

Representatives for the elder Trump did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

According to The Times, the former president's own witness statement called the reference to his daughter "reckless," adding: "Any inference or allegation that Mr Steele makes about my relationship with my daughter is untrue and disgraceful."

Ivanka Trump served as a presidential advisor during the Trump administration and took to the stage in 2020 to introduce him at the Republican National Convention.

However, in recent years, she and her husband, Jared Kushner — formerly a Trump advisor and de facto campaign manager — have steadily distanced themselves from politics.

Last year, the younger Trump announced she was "done" with Washington and was later a no-show at her father's announcement of his 2024 campaign.