NEW YORK (AP) – A Florida judge sanctioned former President Donald Trump and one of his lawyers on Thursday, ordering them to pay nearly $1 million for filing what he said were bogus lawsuits against Trump’s 2016 rival Hillary Clinton and others.
In a blistering filing, US District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks accused Trump of “a pattern of abuse of the courts” to file frivolous lawsuits for political purposes, which he said “undermines the rule of law” and “amounts to obstruction of justice.”
“Here, we are faced with a lawsuit that was never filed, that is frivolous, factually and legally, and brought in bad faith for an improper purpose,” he wrote.
Citing Trump’s recent legal actions against the Pulitzer Prize board, New York Attorney General Letitia James, major tech companies and CNN, he described Trump as a “prolific and sophisticated litigator” who uses the courts “to exact revenge on his political enemies.”
“He is the mastermind behind the strategic abuse of the judicial process,” he wrote.
The ruling requires Trump and his attorney, Alina Habba, to pay nearly $938,000 to the defendants in the case.
Spokesmen for Trump and Habba did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Thursday.
Middlebrooks in September dismissed a lawsuit filed by Trump against Clinton, a former FBI official and the Democratic Party, denying the former president’s claim that he and others conspired to sink the winning presidential campaign by alleging ties to Russia.
The lawsuit names as defendants Clinton and several of her top advisers, as well as former FBI Director James Comey and other FBI officials involved in the investigation into whether Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign coordinated with Russia to alter the election results.
He said the suit contains “egregious structural deficiencies” and many of his “characterizations of events are not credible.”