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A Florida judge sanctioned former US 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 and separate 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 of 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.
Lawsuits have a ‘glaring’ problem: judges
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 Clinton and several top advisers as defendants, as well as former FBI director James Comey, Andrew McCabe and other FBI officials involved in the investigation into whether Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign coordinated with Russia to alter the results. election.
He said the suit contained “glaring structural flaws” and that many of the “characterisations of the events did not work.”
It is the latest legal setback for Trump as he plans another presidential campaign.
A special counsel is investigating an ongoing series of events involving dozens of secret documents found at a Florida property, while a DC grand jury has subpoenaed a Trump surrogate working to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.
Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen said he met for 2½ hours Tuesday with Manhattan prosecutors who have re-examined a years-long investigation into payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about alleged extramarital trysts.
In addition, last week the Trump Organization was fined the maximum penalty under New York State law, $1.6 million, for a scheme in which top executives of the US president avoided personal income taxes on lavish work benefits.
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