A brief history of Donald Trump’s failed lawsuit against Hillary Clinton

Florida judge labels ex-president ‘the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process’

Donald Trump and one of his attorneys have been fined almost $1m by a federal judge in Florida over what he ruled had been a “frivolous” lawsuit launched against ex-US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and 30 other defendants.

Mr Trump had claimed his opponents had attempted to rig the 2016 US presidential election to try to prevent him from winning.

The ex-commander-in-chief first filed the lawsuit in March 2022, accusing Ms Clinton, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), her 2016 presidential campaign manager John Podesta, ex-FBI officials James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, ex-British spy Christopher Steele (author of the notorious “Trump Russia dossier”) and others of attempting to “weave a false narrative” in order to smear him and sink his campaign for the White House by alleging he had sought political favours from Russia.

He demanded $70m in damages to right the perceived wrong, insisting that the conspirators had falsified evidence to deceive law enforcement agencies in a plot that made “even the events of Watergate pale in comparison”.

But US district judge Donald M Middlebrooks for the Southern District of Florida dismissed the suit last September, calling it “a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him”, which contained “glaring structural deficiencies” and “characterisations of events [that] are implausible.

“What the Amended Complaint lacks in substance and legal support it seeks to substitute with length, hyperbole and the settling of scores and grievances,” the judge wrote witheringly, clearly enjoying himself.

He followed that by siding with another defendant in the case, Charles Dolan, in November, awarding him $50,000 and dismissing the legal pleadings of Mr Trump’s team as “abusive litigation tactics” centred around “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,” he wrote.

Finally, on Thursday, Judge Middlebrooks ruled that Mr Trump and his lead counsel, Alina Habba, should be held jointly and severally liable for the total amount of sanctions he imposed to cover the defendants’ legal fees and costs: $937,989.39.

Ms Clinton was awarded $171,631, also to be paid by Mr Trump and Ms Habba, with most of that money intended to cover her legal expenses.

The DNC, its then-chair congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and a related corporation were meanwhile awarded $179,685.

Perhaps most significantly, the judge’s filing built up to an astonishing rebuke of the former commander-in-chief, its author declaring: “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.

“Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start.”

Laying out Mr Trump’s recent run of legal action against everyone from the Pulitzer Prize board to New York attorney-general Letitia James, Big Tech companies and CNN, Judge Middlebrooks labelled the complainant “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,” he wrote.

“He knew full well the impact of his actions... As such, I find that sanctions should be imposed upon Mr Trump and his lead counsel, Ms Habba.”

Despite beating Ms Clinton to the White House, Mr Trump evidently continued to nurture a sense of grievance over accusations of his alleged ties to Russia and persistent suggestions among his enemies that he had Kremlin meddling to thank for his ascent to power, which he routinely denounced as a “witch hunt”.

The question of collusion was investigated extensively by FBI special counsel Robert Mueller in 2018, with the resulting 448-page Mueller Report detailing his findings published the following spring.

In it, the former FBI director reported persuasive evidence of interference before, somewhat anticlimactically, stopping short of recommending that action be taken against Mr Trump while stressing that the dossier “also does not exonerate him”.

After four combative years in the White House, Mr Trump would, of course, go on to question the credibility of the 2020 presidential election as well, which he lost comfortably to Democrat Joe Biden, launching further spurious lawsuits, insisting once again that he was the victim of a vast nationwide conspiracy and leading to the failed insurrection at the US Capitol by a misled mob of his supporters on 6 January 2021.

If there is one consolation in all of this for Mr Trump’s conspiracy-minded fan base, they will no doubt take heart from the news that Judge Middlebrooks just so happens to have been appointed way back in 1997 by one Bill Clinton during his presidency, who just so happens to be the husband of… well, you know.