A federal judge has fined former U.S. President Donald Trump and his team of lawyers about $937,000 (about 850,000 euros) for filing a lawsuit without any legal basis and for purely political reasons against rivals such as Hillary Clinton or former FBI Director James Comey.
The case was filed in March last year by Trump’s lead lawyer — also fined in this ruling — Alina Habba, and is a crowdsourced lawsuit against Clinton, Comey and the Democratic National Committee among others for allegedly orchestrating a conspiracy against him by accusing him of collaborating with Russia during the 2016 presidential election.
In his decision, Magistrate Judge Donald Middlebrooks, of the Southern District Court of Florida, admonishes the mogul’s behavior and ridicules a lawsuit that «no reasonable lawyer would have considered filing» as lacking «recognizable legal basis,» founded on «bad faith» and intended to «advance a dishonest political narrative» through «categorically absurd» demands.
«It is nothing more than a hodgepodge of disconnected, sometimes immaterial events, followed by an implausible conclusion, which together represent a deliberate attempt at harassment,» continues the magistrate, nominated to the judicial office by then-Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1997.
From there, the magistrate proceeds to describe Trump as «a genius for strategic abuse of the judicial process» and a «prolific litigator who constantly employs the courts to exact revenge on his political enemies.» «He cannot be viewed as a client who blindly follows the advice of his lawyers. He is fully aware of the impact of his actions,» the magistrate adds.
For all this, and following the counterclaim filed by Clinton and others singled out by Trump, the magistrate fines the former president, Habba and others of his lawyers with this amount. «Frivolities such as this,» the judge reiterated, «should be neither a vehicle for fundraising nor fodder for social networks».
Shortly after the fine, the former president has withdrawn a counterclaim against the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who is leading a civil suit worth 250 million dollars (about 230 million euros) against the tycoon’s company, the Trump Organization, for alleged fraudulent conduct.
The withdrawal of the counterclaim has occurred precisely before Judge Middlebrooks who, as he did in the case against Clinton, warned Trump’s legal team «seemed to border on frivolity,» according to the US network ABC.
In this case, the prosecution accuses Trump, his three eldest children, the former head of finance of the company, Allen Weisselberg and other collaborators of defrauding lenders, insurers and tax authorities by inflating the value of multiple properties of the organization.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
