Trump and His Lawyer Fined Nearly $1 Million Over ‘Frivolous’ Suit Against Clinton, Comey, and Democrats

Former President Donald Trump and his lawyers must pay almost $1 million in sanctions after filing a “completely frivolous” lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. In a Thursday ruling, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida ordered Trump and his lead attorney, Alina Habba of Habba Madaio & Associates, to pay $937,989.39.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by Trump in March 2022. Trump’s suit accused Clinton, the Democratic Party, the Democratic National Committee, former FBI Director James Comey, and a number of others of a racketeering “plot” against him. Clinton and the others had “maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty” during the 2016 election, it said.

“This case should never have been brought,” wrote Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks in yesterday’s decision. “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.”

He went on to call Trump’s complaint “completely frivolous, both factually and legally … brought in bad faith for an improper purpose,”  “a hodgepodge of disconnected, often immaterial events, followed by an implausible conclusion,” and “a deliberate attempt to harass; to tell a story without regard to facts.”

“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,” wrote Middlebrooks, who dismissed the suit last September and had already granted one motion for sanctions from a defendant in the suit. That motion, granted last November, was brought by Charles Dolan. The motion for sanctions Middlebrooks just ruled on was brought by 18 other defendants that had been named in Trump’s lawsuit.

To demonstrate this “pattern of misuse of the courts,” the judge referred to Trump’s 2021 lawsuit against the Pulitzer Board (which called on the board to “take immediate steps to strip the New York Times and the Washington Post of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting”), his 2021 lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James, his 2021 lawsuit against Twitter for suspending his account, and his 2020 libel suit against CNN.

The judge awarded the defendants the nearly $1 million to cover fees and costs associated with defending themselves against Trump’s lawsuit. “Almost all of Defendants’ attorneys seek substantially discounted rates, ranging from 28% to 66% less than the rates actually billed,” he pointed out.

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FREE MINDS

An interesting First Amendment—and property rights?—question out of Jacksonville, Florida, where people keep projecting antisemitic imagery onto buildings. The city council is now discussing making this a crime. A proposal filed by City Council President Terrance Freeman would make it unlawful to project words or images onto a property without the owner’s consent, reports First Coast News.

#HAPPENINGNOW Legislation being discussed to make it unlawful to project images onto buildings w/o consent

This legislation is separate from legislation City Councilmember Cumber has a presser on @ 10

Mayor @lennycurry & @JSOPIO sheriff: “We know who these people are.”@FCN2go pic.twitter.com/P6FQaaUStO

— Renata Di Gregorio (@RenataFCNews) January 19, 2023

Council Member LeAnna Cumber introduced similar legislation on Wednesday. “Property owners and the city of Jacksonville should have the right to approve what’s being presented and projected on buildings,” she said in a statement.

But would these measures unconstitutionally res