A federal judge has fined former US President Donald Trump and his team of lawyers some $937,000 (about 850,000 euros) for having filed a lawsuit without any legal basis and for purely political reasons against rivals such as Hillary Clinton or the former director FBI James Comey.
The case was presented in March of last year by Trump’s main lawyer -also fined in this sentence-, Alina Habba, and it is a mass lawsuit against Clinton, Comey and the National Committee of the Democratic Party among others for, allegedly orchestrating a conspiracy against him by accusing him of collaborating with Russia during the 2016 presidential election.
In his decision, Judge Donald Middlebrooks, of the court for the Southern District of Florida, admonishes the tycoon’s behavior and ridicules a lawsuit that “no reasonable lawyer would have considered filing”, as it lacks “recognizable legal basis”, being based on ” bad faith” and with the intention of “promoting a dishonest political narrative” through “categorically absurd” demands.
“It is nothing more than a hodgepodge of disconnected events, sometimes immaterial, followed by an implausible conclusion, which together represent a deliberate attempt to harass,” continues the magistrate, nominated for judicial office by then-Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1997. .
From there, the magistrate proceeds to describe Trump as “a genius at strategic abuse of the judicial process” and a “prolific litigator who constantly uses the courts to exact revenge on his political enemies.” “He cannot be considered as a client who blindly follows the advice of his lawyers. He is fully aware of the impact of his actions,” adds the magistrate.
For all this, and as a result of the counterclaim filed by Clinton and others pointed out by Trump, the magistrate fined the former president, Habba and other of his lawyers with this amount. “Frivolities like this,” the judge stressed, “should not be a vehicle to raise funds or bait for social networks.”
