Photo: MANDEL NGAN, BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP / Getty Images
A federal judge said Thursday that the former president donald trump and his lawyers are responsible for paying nearly $1 million in penalties for a lawsuit Trump filed against Hillary Clintonformer Justice Department officials and several others, alleging that they conspired against Trump in the campaign for the 2016 electionaccording to CNN.
“This case should never have been filed. The insufficiency of it as a legal claim was apparent from the start,” wrote Federal Judge Donald Middlebrooks of the Southern District of Florida. “No reasonable lawyer would have brought it up. Intended for a political purpose, none of the charges in the Amended Complaint established a cognizable legal claim.”
The demand of Trump, filed in March 2022 in federal court in Fort Pierce, Floridaaccuses Hillary Clinton, her campaign, several of her campaign aides, former FBI Director James Comey, the Democratic National Committee and others of conspiracy for allegedly joining “an unthinkable plot” to falsely accuse him of collusion with Russia in the 2016 presidential election.
Middlebrooks had previously agreed to a sanctions request filed by one of the defendants in the Trump lawsuit. That order, which called for penalties of more than $66,000, was halted while Trump’s lawyers appealed. The latest decision, which ordered $937,989 in penalties, stems from a request by several other defendants, including Hillary Clinton.
“We are faced with a lawsuit that should never have been filed, that was completely frivolous both in fact and in law, and that was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose,” Judge John Middlebrooks wrote in his order sanctioning Trump and their lawyers.
The judge pointed Donald Trump’s “pattern of misuse of the courts for political gain” while reviewing several other failed lawsuits Trump has filed in recent years.
“He is the mastermind of the strategic abuse of the judicial process, and cannot be seen as a litigator blindly following the advice of a lawyer,” Middlebrooks wrote. “I was well aware of the impact of his actions… As such, I believe that sanctions should be imposed on Mr. Trump and his lead attorney, Ms. [Alina] Haba”.
Under the order, Trump and Habba are jointly and severally liable for the full amount of the sanctions imposed by the judge: $937,989.39. “The amount of fees awarded in this case, while reasonable, is substantial,” Middlebrooks said.
Trump, who is now seeking the Republican presidential nomination in the 2024 elections, has suffered with this the latest in a series of legal setbackswhich include the criminal conviction of the Trump Organization in a New York state court for a years-long tax evasion scheme.
Trump and his company also face a major civil lawsuit from the New York attorney general over an alleged scheme to misrepresent the value of real estate assets for profit.
He is also being sued by writer E. Jean Carroll, who accuses him of rape. in the mid-1990s in New York.
A state grand jury in Georgia recently completed the collection of evidence and the hearing of testimony as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into whether Trump illegally attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 state election, which he lost.
And a special prosecutor is investigating Trump for his attempt to reverse his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden, and for bringing government documents to his Florida residence when he left office.
With information from CNN and CNBC