A federal judge has ordered former President Donald J. Trump and his lawyer to pay nearly $1 million in sanctions to cover legal costs for failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and other defendants in a failed lawsuit against them for promoting the Russia collusion hoax.
On Thursday night, US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks tore into Trump and attorney Alina Habba in a blistering 46-page filing that, in addition to blasting them for abusing the courts, ordered that the $938,000 financial penalty be paid.
“This case should never have been brought,” wrote the Bill Clinton appointee. “Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it. Intended for a political purpose, none of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim.”
“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 added. “Mr. Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries. He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process.”
The money will pay the legal bills of the 31 defendants named in the suit with nearly $172,000 going to the former first lady.
Middlebrooks cited other recent Trump lawsuits against New York Attorney General Letitia James, big tech companies, the Pulitzer Prize board and CNN to describe the ex-POTUS as “a prolific and sophisticated litigant” who abuses the courts in order “to seek revenge on political adversaries.”
“He knew full well the impact of his actions …,” he wrote. “As such, I find that sanctions should be imposed upon Mr. Trump and his lead counsel, Ms. Habba.”
In September 2022, Middlebrooks dismissed the lawsuit which was filed in the Southern District of Florida against the central figures in the operation that undermined Trump during his presidency by suggesting that he was in cahoots with the Kremlin, lashing out at Trump in his ruling that seemingly read more like a political rant than sober jurisprudence.
“At its core, the problem with Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is that Plaintiff is not attempting to seek redress for any legal harm; instead, he is seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him, and this Court is not the appropriate forum,” Middlebrooks wrote at the time.
Judge Middlebrooks’ Thursday order also gave nearly $182,000 to the Democratic National Committee and former chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
“The amount of fees awarded in this case, while reasonable, is substantial,” Middlebrooks said.
Other defendants in Trump’s lawsuit read like a Deep State rogues gallery including, former Clinton campaign managers John Podesta and Robbie Mook, current National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan who was Mrs. Clinton’s foreign policy adviser in 2016 as well as the powerhouse Democratic Party law firm Perkins Coie.
Also sued by Trump was a cadre of DOJ and FBI figures including former FBI director James Comey, disgraced ex-FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, Trump-hating lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and Bruce and Nellie Ohr along with scheming British spook Christopher Steele who created the infamous dirty dossier that would fuel the persecution of the newly-elected 45th president.
Original Article: Clinton-appointed judge slaps Trump with nearly $1 million penalty for ‘frivolous’ lawsuit against Hillary · American Wire News
