NEW YORK (AP) — A Florida Choose sanctioned former President Donald Trump and one in every of his attorneys Thursday, ordering them to pay almost $1 million for submitting what he mentioned was a bogus lawsuit in opposition to Trump’s 2016 rival Hillary Clinton and others.
In a blistering submitting, U.S. District Choose Donald M. Middlebrooks accused Trump of a “sample of abuse of the courts” for submitting frivolous lawsuits for political functions, which he mentioned “undermines the rule of legislation” and “quantities to obstruction of justice.”
“Right here, we’re confronted with a lawsuit that ought to by no means have been filed, which was utterly frivolous, each factually and legally, and which was introduced in dangerous religion for an improper objective,” he wrote.
Citing Trump’s current authorized motion in opposition to the Pulitzer Prize board, New York Lawyer Basic Letitia James, huge tech corporations and CNN, he described Trump as “a prolific and complex litigant” who makes use of the courts “to hunt revenge on political adversaries.”
“He’s the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial course of,” he wrote.
The ruling required Trump and his legal professional, Alina Habba, to pay almost $938,000 to the defendants within the case.
A spokesman for Trump and Habba didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark late Thursday.
Middlebrooks in September dismissed the go well with Trump had filed in opposition to Clinton, former high FBI officers and the Democratic Celebration, rejecting the previous president’s claims that they and others conspired to sink his profitable presidential marketing campaign by alleging ties to Russia.
The lawsuit had named as defendants Clinton and a few of her high advisers, in addition to former FBI Director James Comey and different FBI officers concerned within the investigation into whether or not Trump’s 2016 presidential marketing campaign had coordinated with Russia to sway the result of the election.
He mentioned then the go well with contained “obvious structural deficiencies” and that lots of the “characterizations of occasions are implausible.”