A federal judge who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton fined former President Donald Trump $937,000 for filing a frivolous lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, her campaign and others, according to a court ruling.
District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks ruled that Trump and his legal team displayed a “continuing pattern of misuse of the courts” in order to “dishonestly advance a political narrative,” according to the court ruling. Trump’s suit, described by Middlebrooks as “a two-hundred-page political manifesto,” accused Clinton and her campaign of creating a narrative that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, according to the original lawsuit.
“This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start,” Middlebrooks wrote in the ruling. “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.”
In November, Middlebrooks fined Trump $50,000 after he stated that Trump’s legal team had a “cavalier attitude towards facts demonstrated throughout the case,” according to the ruling. “These were political grievances masquerading as legal claims.”
Middlebrook initially dismissed the lawsuit in September, according to the motion to dismiss. Following the dismissal, Trump’s attorneys fought the ruling and filed a motion to appeal. (RELATED: ‘Systematically Colluding’: Trump Calls For Investigation Into ‘Powerful Corporations,’ FBI)
“We vehemently disagree with the opinion issued by the court today,” Trump attorney Alina Habba said in a statement obtained by Axios. “Not only is it rife with erroneous applications of the law, but it also disregards the numerous independent governmental investigations which substantiate our claim that the defendants conspired to falsely implicate our client and undermine the 2016 Presidential election.”
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – NOVEMBER 28: Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joins artists and activists at the opening of the Eyes on Iran art exhibition at Roosevelt Island’s FDR Four Freedoms State Park on November 28, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
A 2023 report by the New York University Center for Social Media and Politics showed that Russian disinformation on Twitter during the 2016 presidential election did not have a “measurable” impact on the results of the election. Russian bot accounts did not impact “political attitudes, polarization, and vote preferences and behavior,” as 70% of exposure was experienced by 1% of accounts or 32 million users, according to the study.
“Thirty-one individuals and entities were needlessly harmed in order to dishonestly advance a political narrative,” Middlebrooks wrote. “A continuing pattern of misuse of the courts by Mr. Trump and his lawyers undermines the rule of law, portrays judges as partisans, and diverts resources from those who have suffered actual legal harm.”
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