A federal court upheld a $1 million penalty against President Trump and Alina Habba surrounding his lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and others. The lawsuit alleged Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, former FBI Director James Comey, and many more conspired to fabricate links to Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
President Trump and Habba must now pay about $938,000, split between those named in the lawsuit.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote, “Because Trump’s remaining claims are untimely and otherwise meritless, we affirm the dismissal of the amended complaint with prejudice for the other defendants. And because Trump and his attorneys committed sanctionable conduct and forfeited their procedural objections, we affirm both sanctions orders.”
“The Durham Report does not change our conclusions, and the district court lacked jurisdiction to consider the disqualification motion,” the ruling says. “Yet, because the appeal of the dismissal order is not frivolous, we deny both motions for appellate sanctions.”
“Many of Trump’s and Habba’s legal arguments were indeed frivolous,” the filing adds. “Even setting aside the tolling arguments, the district court ruled that Trump brought several frivolous claims, including a ‘malicious prosecution claim without a prosecution,’ and a ‘trade secret claim without a trade secret.’”
The new filing upholds a previous ruling by Judge Donald Middlebrooks, who wrote at the time, “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,” adding, “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.”
