• Former MI6 agent Christopher Steele said that his friendship with Ivanka Trump hurt her relationship with her dad. 
  • Their relationship was "severely damaged" by the revelation, Steele said on Tuesday. 
  • The remarks come as part of the former president's case against Steele and his infamous dossier. 

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, as the Associated Press reported.

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

Trump 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, as Insider's Sonam Sheth 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 DOJ's Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

Steele's testimony to that investigation brought forward numerous unexpected details — including his long-standing friendship with Ivanka.

Trump has referred to Steele as a "Trump hater," as Vanity Fair reported at the time. But Steele said he told the DOJ 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, according to The Times of London.

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

During the investigation, Steele said that "if anything he was 'favorably disposed' toward the Trump family," according to the report.

He even visited a family member — later revealed to be Ivanka — at Trump Tower, the report said.

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

"My understanding is that Ms Trump had not disclosed our relationship to her father," Steele continued, per the Times.

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

Steele went on to attribute 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 Trump did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Per the Times, Trump's own witness statement called the reference to Ivanka "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 RNC.

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.

In 2022 Ivanka announced she was "done" with DC and she was later a no-show at her father's 2024 campaign announcement.