A Florida Judge sanctioned former President Donald Trump and one of his attorneys Thursday, ordering them to pay nearly $1 million for filing what he said was a bogus lawsuit against Trump’s 2016 rival Hillary Clinton and others.
In a blistering filing, U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks accused Trump of a “pattern of abuse of the courts” for filing frivolous lawsuits for political purposes, which he said “undermines the rule of law” and “amounts to obstruction of justice.”
“Here, we are confronted with a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose,” he wrote.
Citing Trump’s recent legal action against the Pulitzer Prize board, New York Attorney General Letitia James, big tech companies and CNN, he described Trump as “a prolific and sophisticated litigant” who uses the courts “to seek revenge on political adversaries.”
“He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process,” he wrote.
The ruling required Trump and his attorney, Alina Habba, to pay nearly $938,000 to the defendants in the case.
A spokesman for Trump and Habba did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Thursday.
Middlebrooks in September dismissed the suit Trump had filed against Clinton, former top FBI officials and the Democratic Party, rejecting the former president’s claims that they and others conspired to sink his winning presidential campaign by alleging ties to Russia.
The lawsuit had named as defendants Clinton and some of her top advisers, as well as former FBI Director James Comey and other FBI officials involved in the investigation into whether Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign had coordinated with Russia to sway the outcome of the election.
He said then the suit contained “glaring structural deficiencies” and that many of the “characterizations of events are implausible.”
(AP)
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4 Responses
Unless they start sanctioning the Democrats who also file politically motivated, and frivolous (which is legalese for for without even an arguable basis in law and facts), it will just make everyone mad at each other. The fact that the judge is a Democrat will encourage the feeling of madness.
It isn’t clear that for people to conspire to defeat their political enemies is illegal or actionable (something you can sue over), and it is allowed to bring a novel theory without being fined for being frivolous. Accusing people who appear to being working for a common goal is not clearly a non-conspiracy. The essence of Trump’s claim were for defamation, and he apparently never argued that the people he was suing knew for a fact that their allegations were false (which is an element you need to prove in a defamation claim).
I would predict the judge will lose on appeal, since the courts are overly inclined to make it easy to claim that law suits involving politicians are frivolous.
Is this judge actually claiming that the Russian collusion hoax was not bought-and-paid-for by the Democrat machine and then deliberately supported by the entrenched officials despite them knowing for a fact that it was a hoax? Perhaps that says a lot more about the judge than about the lawsuit.
As an aside, this Donald M. Middlebrook was nominated by then-President Clinton. And I suppose they see no conflict in that either.
All the delusional holdouts who still support this immoral, dishonest criminal are just not to be believed.
What about his claims are frivolous they are all one hundred percent true is this judge another Clinton operative