In a scathing ruling, a federal judge in Florida on Thursday ordered Donald Trump and one of his lawyers together to pay nearly $1 million in sanctions for filing a frivolous lawsuit against nearly three dozen of Trump’s perceived political enemies, including Hillary Rodham Clinton and former FBI director James Comey.
The ruling was a significant rebuke of Trump, who has rarely faced such consequences in his long history of using the courts as a weapon against business rivals and partners, as well as former employees and reporters.
And it was the latest setback for Trump as he faces a broad range of legal problems and criminal investigations. His lawyers are increasingly under scrutiny themselves for their actions in those cases, as well as divided in the advice they are offering him.
“This case should never have been brought,” US District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks wrote in a 46-page ruling. “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.”
While Trump has often blamed his lawyers for his problems, the judge, in his ruling Thursday, addressed Trump’s history of using the courts as a cudgel, going back decades in his business career.
“Mr Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries,” Middlebrooks wrote. “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. He knew full well the impact of his actions.”
Middlebrooks said Trump’s suit had been “brought in bad faith for an improper purpose” and had “needlessly harmed” the 31 individuals and organizations, including the Democratic National Committee, he had sued “in order to dishonestly advance a political narrative.” The judge added that Trump’s use of the courts had helped to undermine the public’s confidence in them.
“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,” he wrote.
The judge said Trump and the lawyer who filed the case for him, Alina Habba, and her firm, Habba Madaio & Associates, were to pay $937,989.39.
Neither a spokesman for Trump nor Habba immediately responded to requests for comment.
Habba was the lead lawyer among a group who filed the suit on Trump’s behalf in March. She is also representing Trump in a sweeping fraud case brought by the New York state attorney general and a case filed by E Jean Carroll, a woman who alleges that Trump raped her in the 1990s. Habba has offered advice in the federal investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents as well, according to people close to Trump, including arguing he should hire someone to search his properties for any additional documents.
The suit names Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, and other people and entities that he claimed conspired to damage him in the 2016 election with what he called false claims about his ties to Russia. Among the defendants were Comey; former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, who opened the counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia; and former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, who helped circulate a dossier of lurid claims about Trump and Russia, many of which were unsubstantiated.
The conspiracy-minded racketeering suit was filed with hyperbole and exaggerations, and made claims easily shown to be false. In the ruling Thursday, Middlebrooks broke down how the suit’s claims — including that Clinton and Comey had conspired to take down Trump — were “implausible” and “categorically absurd.”
Trump’s claims were “a hodgepodge of disconnected, often immaterial events, followed by an implausible conclusion,” the judge wrote, adding, “This is a deliberate attempt to harass; to tell a story without regard to facts.”
Middlebrooks, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1997, threw out the suit in September, saying that “most of plaintiff’s claims are not only unsupported by any legal authority but plainly foreclosed by binding precedent.” The judge said that what the suit “lacks in substance and legal support, it seeks to substitute with length, hyperbole, and the settling of scores and grievances.”
He said Trump was trying to brandish a “political manifesto” against political rivals, masquerading as a lawsuit.
In November, Middlebrooks fined Trump’s lawyers $50,000 and ordered them to pay the legal fees of one of the defendants. But a number of defendants, including Clinton, filed jointly seeking additional sanctions, which the judge wrote at the time “may be appropriate.” The actions of Trump’s lawyers, he warned then, could also merit attention from “the bar and disciplinary authorities.”
The additional fine was sure to add stress to Trump’s legal team, which has already been displaying tensions. That has been especially true on his handling of classified documents, more than 300 of which made their way from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida club and residence, and remained there long after he left office.
In that case, Trump’s lawyers have divided into camps, with Boris Epshteyn, who is also an adviser to the former president, among those seen as enabling some of his pugilistic instincts.
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