Florida District Court Judge Dismisses Trump’s Frivolous Lawsuit Against Hillary Clinton And Other ‘Political Enemies’ (Updated)

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Rolling Stone reports, Judge Eviscerates Trump’s Bogus Lawsuit Against Hillary Clinton:

Donald Trump in March filed a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and a host of his other perceived enemies for trying to “destroy his life” by falsely accusing him of collusion ahead of the 2016 election. The lawsuit was ridiculous, and on Friday morning, a federal judge ruled it as such, tossing it out while suggesting the former president’s lawyers could even be sanctioned for wasting the court’s time with so many unfounded claims.

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District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks wrote in a nearly 200-page ruling that the complaint — which accuses Clinton, James Comey, Christopher Steele, Peter Strokz, the Democratic National Committee, and others of perpetrating a racketeering conspiracy to besmirch Trump — is “neither short nor plain,” and that it “certainly does not establish Plaintiff is entitled to any relief.”

See Order to Dismiss.

Middlebrooks expounded on why the suit was so ridiculous. “Many of the Amended Complaint’s characterizations of events are implausible because they lack any specific allegations which might provide factual support for the conclusions reached,” he wrote. “For instance, the contention that former FBI director James Comey, senior FBI officials, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein ‘overzealously targeted’ Plaintiff and conspired to harm him through the appointment of special counsel are strikingly similar to the conclusory and formulaic allegations found deficient in the seminal Supreme Court case of Ashcroft v. Iqbal.”

Middlebrooks added that in filing such a claim, attorneys are required to certify that it is not being presented “for any improper purpose” and that he has “serious doubts” whether Trump’s legal team abided by the standard. Brad Heath, a justice reporter for Reuters, noted on Twitter that the federal requirement authorizes sanctions for those who violate it.

Law and Crime adds, Judge Throws Out Trump’s RICO Lawsuit Against Hillary Clinton: ‘Length, Hyperbole, and the Settling of Scores and Grievances’ Have No Legal Merit (excerpt):

The judge was otherwise less than kind to Trump’s lawyers.

“Plaintiff’s theory of this case, set forth over 527 paragraphs in the first 118 pages of the Amended Complaint, is difficult to summarize in a concise and cohesive manner,” Middlebrooks quipped. “It was certainly not presented that way. Nevertheless, I will attempt to distill it here.”

What followed was the following distillation (we’ve omitted the citations to the case record):

The short version: Plaintiff alleges that the Defendants “[a]cting in concert . . . maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty.” The Defendants effectuated this alleged conspiracy through two core efforts. “[O]n one front, Perkins Coie partner Mark Elias led an effort to produce spurious ‘opposition research’ claiming to reveal illicit ties between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives.” To that end, Defendant Hillary Clinton and her campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and lawyers for the Campaign and the Committee allegedly hired Defendant Fusion GPS to fabricate the Steele Dossier. “[O]n a separate front, Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussman headed a campaign to develop misleading evidence of a bogus ‘back channel’ connection between e-mail servers at Trump Tower and a Russian- owned bank.” Clinton and her operatives allegedly hired Defendant Rodney Joffe to exploit his access to Domain Name Systems (“DNS”) data, via Defendant Neustar, to investigate and ultimately manufacture a suspicious pattern of activity between Trump-related servers and a Russian bank with ties to Vladimir Putin, Alfa Bank. As a result of this “fraudulent evidence,” the Federal Bureau of Investigations (“FBI”) commenced “several large-scale investigations,” which were “prolonged and exacerbated by the presence of a small faction of Clinton loyalists who were well-positioned within the Department of Justice”—Defendants James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith, and Bruce Ohr. And while this was ongoing, the Defendants allegedly “seized on the opportunity to publicly malign Donald J. Trump by instigating a full-blown media frenzy.” As a result of this “multi-pronged attack,” Plaintiff claims to have amassed $24 million in damages.

Judge Middlebrooks, a Bill Clinton appointee [on the bench since 1997], quickly noted that the defendants moved to dismiss the case due to the statute of limitations and because it simply lacked merit.

“Whatever the utilities of [the Amended Complaint] as a fundraising tool, a press release, or a list of political grievances, it has no merit as a lawsuit,” several of the defendants wrote in a motion to dismiss.

“I agree,” Middlebrooks responded while noting that the lawsuit suffered from “structural deficiencies,” jurisdictional problems, and was insufficient on substance.

Among the judge’s grievances was the verbose nature of the voluminous filing — “193 pages in length, with 819 numbered paragraphs” — and its naming of a collection of 14 counts, 31 defendants, and a number of “John Does” and unknown corporations as potential defendants.

“Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is neither short nor plain, and it certainly does not establish that Plaintiff is entitled to any relief,” the judge wrote while referencing the federal rules of civil procedure that require “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.”

The takedown of Trump’s case continued:

More troubling, the claims presented in the Amended Complaint are not warranted under existing law. In fact, they are foreclosed by existing precedent, including decisions of the Supreme Court. To illustrate, I highlight here just two glaring problems with the Amended Complaint. There are many others. But these are emblematic of the audacity of Plaintiff’s legal theories and the manner in which they clearly contravene binding case law. First, the Amended Complaint’s answer to the Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss the original Complaint, wherein Defendants noted the lack of predicate RICO offenses, was to add another predicate offense—wire fraud. The Amended Complaint alleges that the Defendants “engaged in a calculated scheme to defraud the news media, law enforcement, and counterintelligence officials for the purpose of proliferating a false narrative of collusion between Trump and Russia.” (Am. Compl. ¶ 577). Not only does Plaintiff lack standing to complain about an alleged scheme to defraud the news media, but his lawyers ignore the Supreme Court’s holdings that the federal wire fraud statute prohibits only deceptive schemes to deprive the victim of money or property. It is necessary to show not only that a defendant engaged in deception, but that an object of the fraud was property. Kelly v. United States, 140 S. Ct. 1565, 1571 (2020); Cleveland v. United States, 531 U.S. 12, 26 (2000). Likewise, the Amended Complaint, like its predecessor, fails to account for the Supreme Court’s requirement that to obstruct justice there must be a nexus to a judicial or grand jury proceeding. United States v. Aquilar, 515 U.S. 593, 599 (1995); see also United States v. Friske, 640 F.3d 1288, 1291 (11th Cir. 2011).

Many of the Amended Complaint’s characterizations of events are implausible because they lack any specific allegations which might provide factual support for the conclusions reached. For instance, the contention that former FBI director James Comey, senior FBI officials, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein “overzealously targeted” Plaintiff and conspired to harm him through appointment of special counsel are strikingly similar to the conclusory and formulaic allegations found deficient in the seminal Supreme Court case of Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009). What the Amended Complaint lacks in substance and legal support it seeks to substitute with length, hyperbole, and the settling of scores and grievances.

In other words, the novella Trump’s lawyers filed in court was both too much and not enough: it attempted to cover for its failures to allege winning legal claims by engaging in garrulous yet pointless narratives.

Middlebrooks later employed a term for this style of lawyering.

“Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is a quintessential shotgun pleading, and “[c]ourts in the Eleventh Circuit have little tolerance for shotgun pleadings.” Vibe Micro, Inc. v. Shabanets, 878 F.3d 1291, 1295 (11th Cir. 2018). Such pleadings waste judicial resources and are an unacceptable form of establishing a claim for relief. Id.; Strategic Income Fund, LLC v. Spear, Leeds & Kellogg Corp., 305 F.3d 1293, 1295–96 & ns. 9, 10 (11th Cir. 2002).

In some cases, Middlebrooks wrote, Trump’s lawyers cited material that did not back up their assertions. An example were several references to a 2019 Inspector General report about the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation. Trump’s assertions, Middlebrooks said, twisted the meaning and the conclusion of the underlying IG report.

“Plaintiff and his lawyers are of course free to reject the conclusion of the Inspector General,” Middlebrooks wrote. “But they cannot misrepresent it in a pleading.”

And, though Trump’s lawyers heaped scorn upon former Perkins Coie cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann, who was charged with lying to the FBI by Special Counsel John Durham, “nowhere does the Amended Complaint mention Mr. Sussmann’s acquittal” of those charges, Middlebrooks noted.

Elsewhere, the judge said Trump’s lawyers cited Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681 (1997) to support extending the statute of limitations, “but the Supreme Court in that case arrived at the opposite conclusion than that which Plaintiff urges,” Middlebrooks wrote: “it rejected a stay of litigation during President Clinton’s term and concluded that his engagement in civil litigation would not unduly interfere with his presidential duties.”

The judge said he had “serious doubts” about whether Trump’s lawyers properly certified that the case had legal merit.

Middlebrooks also slammed Trump’s lawyers for filing tort claims against U.S. Government employees without first pressing the case in the proper forum under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

As to jurisdiction, the judge noted that several of the defendants have no appropriate connections to Florida and, thus, cases cannot be pressed against them using the Sunshine State as a forum.

The judge’s 65-page opinion on the matter concluded by dismissing the Trump lawsuit with prejudice against the personal defendants and corporations. That means it cannot be refiled. The judge dismissed the U.S. Government without prejudice as a substituted defendant for several politicians and federal employees, including Adam Schiff.

Trump’s incomepent parking garage lawyer Alina Habba said in a statement. “We will immediately move to appeal this decision.”

Good luck with that, you hack. “I hire only the best people,” my ass!

Rule 11 sanctions for Trump and his incompetent attorneys. The judge should make them individually liable for sanctions so that Trump cannot stick his lawyers, whom he is almost certainly not going pay for this frivolous lawsuit, with paying the sanctions.

UPDATE: Interesting related story to Trump’s judge shopping for Judge Cannon in his clssified documents/Espionage Act case. The Daily Beast reports, Trump Went Judge Shopping and It Paid Off in Mar-a-Lago Case:

When former President Donald Trump summoned up years of bubbling resentment and sued Hillary Clinton and everyone else involved in Russiagate earlier this year, he naturally filed his lawsuit in South Florida—home to his oceanside estate.

And yet, when his attorneys formally filed the paperwork, they selected a tiny courthouse in the sprawling federal court district’s furthest northeast corner—a satellite location that’s 70 miles from Mar-a-Lago. They ignored the West Palm Beach federal courthouse that’s a 12-minute drive away.

Trump’s legal team, it seemed, was specifically seeking out a particular federal judge: one he appointed as president.

The tactic failed, and Trump instead got a Clinton-era judge whom he promptly tried to disqualify for alleged bias. U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks called him out in a snarky footnote.

“I note that Plaintiff filed this lawsuit in the Fort Pierce division of this District, where only one federal judge sits: Judge Aileen Cannon, who Plaintiff appointed in 2020. Despite the odds, this case landed with me instead. And when Plaintiff is a litigant before a judge that he himself appointed, he does not tend to advance these same sorts of bias concerns,” Middlebrooks wrote in April.

Months later, Trump once again sued in the Southern District of Florida, this time seeking to hamper the FBI investigation into the way he kept hundreds of classified records at Mar-a-Lago. Except this time, he got Cannon.

The strategy is already paying off.

This speaks to the rank corruption and unfitness to serve on the bench of Judge Cannon. She must be impeached.





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