A Bill Clinton-appointed federal judge has ordered President Donald Trump to pay Hillary Clinton $172,000 after throwing out his “frivolous” lawsuit and hitting the 45th POTUS with $938,000 in sanctions.
Trump made headlines when he launched a massive lawsuit against Hillary and her allies.
The lawsuit accuses Clinton “and her cohorts” of “maliciously” conspiring “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 being targeted by the “Russia Hoax.”
Judge Donald Middlebrooks of the Southern District of Florida threw the case out and yesterday.
Middlebrooks also 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.
The judge 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.
Hillary 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,” Middlebrooks, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, said.
“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.”
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
It's Judge MIddlebrooks' second blistering sanctions order against Habba et alhttps://t.co/P8un0eU5Kj pic.twitter.com/CQ1RF1uSwL
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 20, 2023
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.
