A federal appeals court has upheld a nearly $1 million penalty against President Donald Trump and his legal team for what judges deemed “sanctionable conduct” in a lawsuit targeting Hillary Clinton and other Democrats over the 2016 election.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court that many of Trump’s legal claims were “frivolous” and dismissed his $24 million suit.
The panel affirmed that U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks acted correctly when he sanctioned Trump and his former attorney, now-acting New Jersey U.S. Attorney Alina Habba, ordering them to pay $937,989.39 for “bad faith” legal arguments.
The lawsuit alleged that Clinton and others conspired to create a false narrative linking Trump to Russia to “discredit, delegitimize and defame” him. Middlebrooks found the case riddled with legal deficiencies, including a “malicious prosecution claim without a prosecution” and a “trade secret claim without a trade secret.”
“This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it,” Middlebrooks wrote. He said the lawsuit was intended to harass political opponents and served a political purpose.
Middlebrooks further noted that Trump, “a prolific and sophisticated litigant,” cannot be excused as simply following legal advice.
“He knew full well the impact of his actions,” the judge wrote, calling him the “mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process.”
Trump’s legal team dismissed the ruling, with a spokesperson calling it part of ongoing “Democrat-led Witch Hunts, including the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ hoax” and asserting that Trump “will continue to pursue this matter to its just and rightful conclusion.”
The ruling is the latest chapter in a series of legal battles for Trump, highlighting ongoing tensions between politics and the courts and raising questions about the limits of litigation in settling political scores.
Legal analysts say it shows that courts are willing to impose significant financial penalties on high-profile figures for pursuing baseless claims.
