The Former Guy just lost BIGLY on his case to sue Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Peter Strzok, the DNC, Christopher Steele and others for allegedly “manufacturing” a false story that he and his campaign received and accepted help from Russia during the 2016 election.
US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks dismissed the lawsuit Thursday, saying “most of Plaintiff’s claims are not only unsupported by any legal authority but plainly foreclosed by binding precedent.”
“What (Trump’s lawsuit) lacks in substance and legal support it seeks to substitute with length, hyperbole, and the settling of scores and grievances,” Middlebrooks, a Bill Clinton appointee, wrote.
Trump filed his sprawling lawsuit in March, naming a wide cast of characters that Trump has accused for years of orchestrating a “deep state” conspiracy against him – including former FBI Director James Comey and other FBI officials, the retired British spy Christopher Steele and his associates, and a handful of Clinton campaign advisers.
Middlebrooks, of the Southern District of Florida, said there were “glaring problems” with Trump’s “audacious” interpretations of the law, and that many of Trump’s specific factual assertions were “implausible” or unsupported.
Trump “is not attempting to seek redress for any legal harm,” Middlebrooks said. “(I)nstead, he is seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him, and this Court is not the appropriate forum.”
The ruling is a legal victory for the figures that Trump sued, many of whom were involved in Clinton’s campaign in 2016 or were involved in the US government’s efforts to investigate Russian interference in that election.
This includes including Clinton, several of her top 2016 campaign officials, the Democratic National Committee, Comey, his former deputy Andrew McCabe, former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. It also includes Steele, author of the Trump-Russia dossier and the opposition group that Steele worked with, Fusion GPS.
So, in court, it is now documented that Russia was not a hoax. That Trump’s claims that it was merely a “partisan witch hunt” have been thrown out on its ear.
In fact, he lost so big the Judge issues $1 Million in Sanctions against him and his attorneys.
Here’s part of the sanction ruling:
Federal District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks on Thursday dropped the hammer on former President Donald Trump's attorneys by hitting them with sanctions totaling nearly $1 million for what he described as "misuse of the courts."
In a court order flagged by Politico's Kyle Cheney, Middlebrooks raked Trump's lawyers over the coals for their failed lawsuit against Hillary Clinton for purportedly defaming him by accusing him of being Russian President Vladimir Putin's puppet during the 2016 campaign.
"This case should never have been brought," Middlebrooks began his order. "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."
Middlebrooks went on to detail the damage caused by the Trump legal team's actions.
"Thirty-one individuals and entities were needlessly harmed in order to dishonestly advance a political narrative," he said. "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."
As evidence of the frivolity of the lawsuit, Middlebrooks cited an interview Trump attorney Alina Habba gave to Fox News' Sean Hannity where she revealed even Trump thought the case against Clinton wouldn't work and that she persuaded him to back it anyway.
"The former president looked at me and he told me, you know what Alina. You’re not going to win," Habba told Hannity last September. "You can’t win, just get rid of it, don’t do the case. And I said, no, we have to fight."
In all, Middlebrooks levied sanctions against the Trump lawyers totaling $938,000.
No, you don’t have to fight.
Since it’s in front the exact same judge, Trump today has decided to drop the similarly $250 Million “partisan bias” suit he had against the investigation by NY Attorney General Letitia James.
The withdrawal comes after U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks warned Trump's legal team that the lawsuit was borderline frivolous.
"Plaintiff, PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP, by and through his undersigned counsel and pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i), hereby voluntarily dismisses his claims in this action against Defendant, LETITIA JAMES, without prejudice," the letter said.
The lawsuit sought to shield Trump's revocable trust from James, who is suing the Trump Organization for fraudulent conduct.
It is the unwavering narrative the GOP/MAGA faithful that Trump was “railroaded” by Hillary, the DNC and James Comey. [And that the Letitia James suit was more of the “witch hunt.”] Their scenario is that the DNC paid Christopher Steele to gin-up a bunch of phony BS accusations in order to trick the FBI into investigating the Trump campaign.
There are certain of this. It is sacrosanct. Except for those pesky facts and stuff.
The FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation headed by Peter Strzok did not start as a result of Christopher Steele. It began on June 16, 2016 after Australian Ambassador Alexander Downer reported to the FBI that he’d been told by a Trump staffer that Russia had hacked the DNC hunting for Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Christopher Steele didn’t even write his first memo until 4 days later, on June 20th. He didn’t actually talk to anyone in the DOJ about his findings until July 5th when he met with Bruce Ohr.
So literally, their entire scenario is not possible. It didn't happen that way.
All of that is on top of the fact that the Mueller investigation ultimately found Trump “not exonerated” for 10 counts of Obstruction.
Mr Mueller said he had not exonerated Mr Trump of obstruction of justice.
The former FBI director spent two years probing alleged collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia, but did not establish collusion in a crime.
He concluded that Russia had interfered in the election with the intention of benefitting Mr Trump's campaign.
Mr Trump frequently criticised the special counsel investigation during its investigation, branding it a "witch hunt". Responding to Mr Mueller's testimony on Wednesday, he said: "This was a great day for me."
In all, 35 people and three companies were charged by the special counsel on matters relating both directly and indirectly to alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. No members of the Trump family were charged.
Mr Mueller and his team concluded that they were unable to charge the president with a crime, but could not exonerate him either.
[..]
The questions focused largely on Mr Mueller's investigation of President Trump and his decision to say he could not exonerate the president of obstruction of justice, but Mr Mueller repeatedly stressed the importance of concerns over ongoing Russian interference in US democracy.
"Over the course of my career I have seen a number of challenges to our democracy. The Russian government's effort to interfere in our election is among the most serious," he said.
He added: "Much more needs to be done in order to protect against this intrusion, by the Russians but others as well."
The view that Mueller only delivered a “nothing burger” comes from the letter penned by Bill Barr that preceded his report and lied about its contents and findings.
The Justice Department under Attorney General William Barr improperly withheld portions of an internal memo Barr cited in announcing that then-President Donald Trump had not obstructed justice in the Russia investigation, a federal appeals panel said Friday.
The department had argued that the 2019 memo represented private deliberations of its lawyers before any decision was formalized, and was thus exempt from disclosure. A federal judge previously disagreed, ordering the Justice Department to provide it to a government transparency group that had sued for it.
At issue in the case is a March 24, 2019, memorandum from the head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and another senior department official that was prepared for Barr to evaluate whether evidence in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation could support prosecution of the president for obstruction of justice.
Barr has said he looked to that opinion in concluding that Trump did not illegally obstruct the Russia probe, which was an investigation of whether his campaign had colluded with Russia to tip the 2016 election.
A year later, a federal judge sharply rebuked Barr's handling of Mueller's report, saying Barr had made "misleading public statements" to spin the investigation's findings in favor of Trump and had shown a "lack of candor."
The OLC did not allow for Trump himself to be indicted — but 25 Russians were indicted for their hacking and influence operations. 8 members of Trump's entourage were prosecuted and convicted by Mueller. 4 of them, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos and Alex Van Der Zwaan were specifically convicted of lying under oath about their contacts with Russians.
One of those Russians was Russian Military Intelligence (GRU) Operative Konstantin Kilimnick. According to the Senate Report on Russia, Kiliminick had ties directly to the hackers who had been indicted by Mueller, and Trump’s Campaign Chair Paul Manafort shared internal polling information with Kilimnick which he in turn gave to the GRU Hackers.
Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had deep ties to a Russian intelligence officer and secretly shared campaign information, according to a sweeping Senate Intelligence Committee report released Tuesday.
The nearly 1,000-page report offers a detailed portrait of Manafort’s connection to Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the Senate panel identifies as a Russian intelligence officer with potential ties to the hack of Democratic emails during the 2016 election.
“On numerous occasions over the course of his time on the Trump Campaign, Manafort sought to secretly share internal Campaign information with Kilimnik,” the committee wrote.
Kilimnik is a longtime associate of Manafort, and the Senate report notes that they “formed a close and lasting relationship that would endure to the 2016 U.S. elections and beyond.”
Manafort was hired as Trump’s campaign manager in March 2016 and reached out to Kilimnik, in advance, to notify him of the development, according to the report.
“The Committee found that Manafort’s presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for the Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. The Committee assesses that Kilimnik likely served as a channel to Manafort for Russian intelligence services, and that those services likely sought to exploit Manafort’s access to gain insight [into] the Campaign,” the committee found.
[...]
The report floats that Kilimnik may have been linked to the 2016 hack of Democratic National Committee emails, though much of the intelligence that is based on is redacted from the report. The Senate committee also noted that “two pieces of information raise the possibility” of Manafort’s potential connection to the “hack-and-leak operations,” though the information is redacted.
“Manafort’s involvement with the GRU hack-and-leak operation is largely unknown. Kilimnik was in sustained contact with Manafort before, during, and after the GRU cyber and influence operations, but the Committee did not obtain reliable, direct evidence that Kilimnik and Manafort discussed the GRU hack-and-leak operation,” the committee wrote.
The committee noted that it had “obtained some information” suggesting Kilimnik might have been connected to the hacking and that “information suggests that a channel for coordination on the GRU hack … operation may have existed through Kilimnik,” but they have “limited insight” into his communications.
On top of Manafort, you had Roger Stone who lied to Congress about acting as a go-between for the Trump Campaign and Wikileaks. His trial revealed that besides being in direct contact with (Russian asset) Guccifer 2.0 during the election, Stone provided inside information to Trump from Wikileaks revealing that their second set of emails to be dumped — which had been acquired through Guccifer — would be focused on Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta.
Later, on the same day that the WaPo did a “request for comment” with the Trump Campaign before they broke the “Grab ‘em by the pussy” story — the Trump campaign contacted Stone and told him to have Wikileaks “Release the Podesta Emails.”
In October 2016, during the fraught final weeks of the showdown between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Roger Stone got word that a damning recording of his candidate was about to drop. That tape would become instantly infamous for Trump’s degrading remarks about women and his apparent boasts about committing sexual assault. “When you’re a star, they let you do it—you can do anything,” Trump told Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush in 2005, in audio published by the Washington Post. “Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
Apparently sensing the cataclysmic damage the comments would wreak, Stone—self-styled dirty trickster and unofficial Trump adviser—spoke by phone to the conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, directing him to get in touch with Julian Assange, whose organization, WikiLeaks, had obtained Russian-hacked emails from Democratic Party staffers, including Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. “Drop the Podesta emails immediately,” Stone instructed, seeking to “balance the news cycle” after the release of the Access Hollywood tape. Thirty-two minutes later, WikiLeaks followed through.
[...]
Trump has taken pains to distance himself from the activities of his surrogates, but the report affirms he was in on it, speaking frequently, for instance, to Stone.
“Stone had information on the release in advance,” Manafort recalled Trump telling him, according to the report. (Stone and Manafort were both convicted in connection with the Mueller probe;
Manafort is currently serving his sentence in home confinement due to the coronavirus pandemic, and Stone’s sentence was
commuted by Trump in July.)
So we have Stone getting info from Wikileaks and giving it to Trump. Then we have Trump and his campaign — through Stone — having Wikileaks release more corruptly obtain emails to help with a bad news cycle.
That’s called collusion. Now it didn’t technically involve the Trump campaign, because Stone wasn’t part of the campaign. And it didn’t technically involve Russia — although Wikileaks were posting hacked emails that were obtained by Russian intelligence. It’s not a direct person to person link, it goes through surrogates, but it is ultimately a link between Russia and Trump during the campaign.
And for some reason Trump thought, with all these indictments and convictions in his wake, that he could sue Hillary Clinton over this and — win?
Really, seriously, not.
And now we have it on record the Russia was definitely, clearly, not a “hoax.”
It was quite real.