HILLARY WINS: A million reasons why Trump’s 2016 vendetta just backfired

HILLARY WINS: A million reasons why Trump's 2016 vendetta just backfired

A judge has imposed nearly $1 million in sanctions on a vengeful Donald Trump for abusing the court system to lash out at his 2016 presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton.

U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks released a Thursday night ruling excoriating Trump and his attorneys, saying that the lawsuit never should have been filed, that it was clearly for political purposes rather than seeking justice, and that “no reasonable lawyer” would have ever filed it.

Alina Habba, one of the attorneys who has joined Trump’s causes since he left the White House, represented Trump in this filing, and is his attorney of record in the case brought by E. Jean Carroll.

Aside from those, she represents him frequently on right-wing news programs.

Now her firm, Habba Madaio & Associates, along with Trump, is on the hook for $937,989.39 in sanctions, after Judge Middlebrooks ruled that his complaint was clearly inadequate and that nothing alleged in it rose to the level of “a cognizable legal claim.”

He also called out Trump directly for a pattern of abusing the justice system.

“Mr. Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries,” Judge Middlebrooks wrote. “He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer. He knew full well the impact of his actions.”
The judge had already imposed a smaller fine ($50k) in the case, and ordered Trump’s lawyers to pay legal fees for one of the named defendants, Charles Dolan, a former aide to Clinton, who Trump accused of having a role in collecting the information in the Steel Dossier.
He also addressed the weakness of Trump’s claims at the time.
A copy of that ruling was shared by the National Law Journal at the time, reading, in part:
“At its core, the problem with [Trump’s] Amended Complaint is that Plaintiff is not attempting to seek redress for any legal harm; instead, 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.”
Trump has not publicly responded to the decree of sanctions, but the kitchen staff at Mar-a-Lago may be scrubbing ketchup off the walls this weekend.
Stephanie Bazzle

Steph Bazzle is a news writer who covers politics and theocracy, always aiming for a world free from extremism and authoritarianism. Follow Steph on Twitter @imjustasteph. Sign up for all of her stories to be delivered to your inbox here: