Christmas came about a week early for BuzzFeed on Wednesday, when a federal judge in Miami handed the Web site a major victory in a lawsuit that was filed in response to BuzzFeed’s controversial decision, in January 2017, to publish Christopher Steele’s Trump-Russia dossier—the origin of the infamous pee tape allegation, and a road map of Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, some of which have since been proved true. BuzzFeed initially failed to redact the name of a Cyprus-dwelling Russian technology executive, Aleksej Gubarev, whose company was accused in a brief passage of “using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data, and ‘conduct altering operations’ against the Democratic party leadership.”

Gubarev swiftly sued, claiming that his cameo in the explosive compendium of collusion allegations had cost him $130 million in business damages. BuzzFeed maintained that its decision to publish the dossier in full was protected by the First Amendment, and that it had done so in the public interest, since the secretive and unverified dossier was being discussed privately at the highest levels of government. But even within the journalistic community there was much criticism and hand-wringing over whether BuzzFeed had gone too far. The document had been circulating in official Washington for several months, but few of its claims had been verified, and some, at the time, seemed outlandish.

The ruling was a vigorous and resounding statement of the rights of journalists, and a clear vindication for BuzzFeed. Judge Ursula Ungaro sided with BuzzFeed based on the so-called “fair report” privilege, which inoculates journalists against defamation suits when reporting on government affairs. “[The] privilege exists to protect the media while they gather the information needed for the public to exercise effective oversight of the government,” she wrote in her ruling. Val Gurvits, the lead attorney for Gubarev, issued a statement in response, promising an appeal: “First and foremost, nothing in today’s ruling by the Court suggests in any way that the allegations concerning Mr. Gubarev [and his companies] were true. Instead, the Court ruled on a narrow legal issue, finding that BuzzFeed had a privilege to publish the information even if it was false. When we started this case, we knew that it would be a marathon and not a sprint. We remain convinced that, after appeal, this matter will be presented to a jury and that we will succeed in vindicating the Plaintiffs’ good names.”

On Thursday afternoon, I got on the phone with BuzzFeed editor in chief Ben Smith to talk about the decision, as well as what it means for his publication—and for the dossier itself.

Vanity Fair: The ruling must be a relief.

Ben Smith: It’s a huge relief. This was real threat to what we do, although one we were confident we’d win. But you can never be a hundred percent confident. And also, this kind of litigation is always distracting and draining. It was a relief in a way to see the legal side of this catch up with what’s become a consensus: that the dossier is an important document.

Were you expecting this to go to trial?

We were optimistic about this motion. This motion really reflected a core thing about a reporter’s ability to cover the American government. Also, I think this was a big test for BuzzFeed as an institution, and for Jonah [Peretti, the C.E.O. of BuzzFeed]. I’m incredibly impressed with the extent to which he and the business leadership of the company, and the board, just took this on and stood by the newsroom beyond what I think anybody had any right to expect.