Judge Orders Trump to Pay Hillary Clinton $172K As Part $938K Sanctions Ruling For Bringing ‘Frivolous’ Lawsuit
Former President Donald Trump made headlines when he launched a massive lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and others claiming Clinton “and her cohorts maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty.”
Trump wanted $72 million in damages for what we all know now as the Russian hoax. The judge threw the case out and yesterday hit Trump and his attorney, Alina Habba, with $938,000 in sanctions for bringing what the judge called a “completely frivolous” lawsuit to his court.
Judge Donald Middlebrooks of the Southern District of Florida said in his ruling, “This case should never have been brought. 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.”
The money Trump was ordered to pay will go towards the legal bills of 31 defendants named in his suit, including Hillary Clinton, who will receive $172,000.
Middlebrooks wrote:
“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.
“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 Amended Complaint is a hodgepodge of disconnected, often immaterial events, followed by an implausible conclusion. This is a deliberate attempt to harass; to tell a story without regard to facts,” Middlebrooks, an appointee of former president Bill Clinton, said.
According to Politico:
He specifically cited Trump’s claim that Clinton conspired with former FBI Director James Comey to seek a Trump prosecution — one that Middlebrooks noted never occurred — as “categorically absurd.”
He also noted that Trump and Habba repeatedly mischaracterized the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
They also cited Russian intelligence — shared by then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe with Sen. Lindsey Graham — as a basis for one of their claims, without noting that it was Russian intelligence and that Ratcliffe said it was unverified.
JUST IN: A federal judge in Florida has sanctioned Donald Trump's attorneys *$938,000* for what he says is a pattern of abusing the court system for political purposes
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 20, 2023
It's Judge MIddlebrooks' second blistering sanctions order against Habba et alhttps://t.co/P8un0eU5Kj pic.twitter.com/CQ1RF1uSwL
Trump, attorneys ordered to pay over $937,000 in sanctions for allegedly abusing court https://t.co/kBlQdlS3li
— Axios (@axios) January 20, 2023