The court found that President Donald Trump and attorney Alina Habba “give us no reason to reverse the district court’s ruling that these claims were frivolous.” It also heldthat the lawsuit constitutes little more than an “abuse of judicial resources.”
A federal appeals court will hold President Donald Trump and his allies liable for about $1 million in penalties for filing “frivolous” lawsuits against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, and former FBI Director James Comey.
On Wednesday, Chief Judge Wiliam Pryor, Jr., of the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the president and his attorney, Alina Habba, engaged in “sanctionable conduct” by litigating claims against Trump’s political opponents.
Trump’s lawsuit was filed in 2022, naming defendants including Clinton, Comey, the DNC, and others. It claimed that the defendants worked together to tarnish Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, taking particular issue with allegations of foreign collusion.
In court documents, Trump argued that Clinton, the Democratic candidate in the 2016 presidential election, worked with her allies to “discredit, delegitimize, and defame” Trump by producing false or misleading documents indicating that his campaign had coordinated with the Russian government.
However, in 2023, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks objected to Trump’s legal tactics, finding that the lawsuit “should never have been brought.” In his ruling, Middlebrooks ordered Trump and Habba to pay nearly $1 million in legal fees to the defendants.
“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,” Middlebrooks wrote in his 2023 ruling.
Middlebrooks also observed that Trump cannot simply hide behind claims of poor legal counsel, noting that the president has long used lawsuits as a means of intimidating and harassing his rivals.
“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 and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer,” Middlebrooks said.
Pryor’s decision reaffirms Middlebrook’s, stating that the president and Habba “give us no reason to reverse the district court’s ruling that these claims were frivolous.” It also holds that the lawsuit constitutes little more than the “abuse of judicial resources.”
The ruling was co-signed by other members the circuit, including Judges Andrew Brassher and Embry Kidd.
Trump’s legal team appears undeterred by the defeat, saying that the president “continues to fight back against all Democrat-led Witch Hunts, including the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ hoax and the un-Constitutional and un-American weaponization of our justice system by Crooked Joe Biden and his handlers.”
Sources
Appeals court upholds $1M penalty against Trump in lawsuit against Hillary Clinton
Appeals court upholds $1 million penalty against Trump over ‘frivolous’ Clinton, Comey lawsuit
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