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President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with House and Senate leadership, Wednesday, March 1, 2017, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) | Evan Vucci/AP Photo 3 Russians named in Trump dossier sue Fusion GPS for libel

Three Russian investors are suing private investigation firm Fusion GPS and its founder Glenn Simpson for libel over the handling of an intelligence dossier containing salacious allegations against President Donald Trump.

Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan filed suit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, claiming that their reputations were unfairly tattered by the so-called dossier — a largely unsubstantiated document that has taken on a larger-than-life role in several investigations into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

"Even though the Dossier contained unverified allegations, Defendants recklessly placed it beyond their control and allowed it to fall into the hands of media devoted to breaking news on the hottest subject of the day: the Trump candidacy," the suit alleges.

The plaintiffs are among the backers of Alfa Bank, a financial institution that the dossier accuses of involvement in Russian efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

In May, the same three Russian oligarchs filed a separate libel suit in a New York state court against BuzzFeed over its publication of the dossier.

The new suit accuses Fusion GPS and former Wall Street Journal reporter Simpson of circulating the dossier to journalists for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yahoo, CNN and others. The reports were shared so broadly that they were all but certain to be published in some form, the suit alleges.

"Plaintiffs seek an award of compensatory and punitive damages for the harm to their personal and professional reputations, current business interests, and the impairment of business opportunities that resulted from the blatantly false and defamatory statements and implications about them published by the Defendants and republished by BuzzFeed and countless other media around the world," the complaint says.

A spokeswoman for Fusion GPS declined to comment on the latest suit, which was assigned to Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee.

Two of the Russian investors who filed the suit Tuesday have a previous history of taking similar litigation to U.S. courts.

In 2000, Fridman and Aven sued the DC-based Center for Public Integrity over a report that suggested they were involved in drug-running and organized crime.

A federal judge ultimately threw out the suit, ruling that there was no evidence of actual malice on the part of CPI and that Fridman and Aven "were limited public figures for purposes of the public controversy involving corruption in post-Soviet Russia and the future of Western aid and investment in the country."