Trump ordered to pay Hillary Clinton $171,631 in legal fees over bogus lawsuit
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- Trump and his attorney were ordered to pay $171,631 to Hillary Clinton in legal fees.
- Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks punished the two for filing a "completely frivolous" lawsuit.
- Middlebrooks dismissed the case in its entirety in September.
Former President Donald Trump and his attorney, Alina Habba, have been ordered to pay Hillary Clinton $171,631 in legal fees for pursuing a bogus lawsuit against her and others.
In a filing on Thursday, Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks ordered the pair to pay Clinton and ten other groups a total of nearly $1 million in legal fees over a "completely frivolous" lawsuit against Clinton and a long list of Trump's political foes.
The lawsuit alleged there was a conspiracy to spread lies and damaging information about Trump in 2016 in an effort to aid Clinton in the presidential race.
In Thursday's filing, Middlebrooks slammed Trump and Habba over the case.
"This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start," Middlebrooks wrote. "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 continued, noting that 31 parties were "needlessly harmed in order to dishonestly advance a political narrative," adding that this was just a continuance of a "pattern of misuse of the courts" by Trump and his attorney.
The judge previously dismissed the case "in its entirety" in September 2022, agreeing with the defendants that it lacked merit and was simply a "two-hundred-page political manifesto."
Habba is one of at least 16 of Trump's attorneys who have been sanctioned by the courts for filing conspiratorial lawsuits, according to Insider's Jacob Shamsian.
Hours after Middlebrooks' filing became public, Trump withdrew a lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James that also happened to be before Middlebrooks. The judge had referenced the suit against James in his order on Thursday, noting it had "all the telltale signs of being both vexatious and frivolous."