Judge fined a group of Trump lawyers $50k each for filing meritless and mistake-strewn lawsuit against Hillary Clinton
- A group of Trump lawyers was fined over a failed case alleging a vast pro-Clinton conspiracy.
- The judge called it a “deliberate use of the judicial system to pursue a political agenda.”
A group of former President Donald Trump’s lawyers were pilloried by a judge and slapped with fines over a failed lawsuit that accused Hillary Clinton and dozens of others of a vast anti-Trump conspiracy.
In a searing sanctions order, lawyers Alina Habba, Michael Madaio, Peter Ticktin and Jamie Alan Sasson, and their respective law firms, were fined $50,000 each, plus some legal fees, on Friday.
Their lawsuit, which was tossed out in September, had accused the defendants of concocting an “unthinkable plot” to connect Trump’s 2016 election campaign to Russian influence, all on behalf of Clinton.
On Friday, Judge Donald Middlebrooks slammed the failed case, describing it as “a deliberate use of the judicial system to pursue a political agenda.”
The case was riddled with basic falsehoods, showing a “cavalier attitude” towards the facts, Middlebrooks said.
Ticktin said in a statement to Insider that the lawyers are “disappointed” and will appeal. “We attempted to right a wrong, and our reward is a kick in the teeth,” he said.
The New York Times also reported Habba as planning to appeal.
One of the defendants, Charles Dolan, was initially identified in the case as a former top DNC chairman and close advisor to Clinton, as well as a close associate of Igor Danchenko, the Russia analyst who contributed to the now widely discredited Steele dossier.
Danchenko was indicted in John Durham’s investigation of the Russia probe, but was cleared in October.
In particular, Trump’s lawyers accused Dolan of being the source of the dossier’s infamous claims of an encounter between Trump and prostitutes in a Moscow hotel.
But the case failed to establish this, and made several basic errors in the process, Middlebrook said. He noted that the case misidentified Dolan as living in New York, when he actually lives in Virginia.
Dolan’s lawyers challenged the initial claims, saying that Clinton had never met him and that his work for her campaign had amounted to door-knocking. His only connection to Danchenko was via business interests and a conference in Moscow, they said.
Nonetheless, when an amended complaint was filed it remained substantially unchanged, merely watering down Dolan’s claimed association with Clinton. It also argued that most of the evidence for the claims was contained in Durham’s investigation of the Russia probe.
The judge rejected this, saying they had “cherry-picked” its contents and ignored anything that contradicted their theory.
“Plaintiff’s use of the indictment is nothing short of a deliberate disregard of the truth or falsity of their claims,” he wrote, calling it a “textbook” example of actions deserving of sanctions.
Despite warnings from the judge, Habba continued to push her claims on Fox News with Sean Hannity, Middlebrook said.
He wrote: “Every claim was frivolous, most barred by settled, well-established existing law. These were political grievances masquerading as legal claims.
“This cannot be attributed to incompetent lawyering. It was a deliberate use of the judicial system to pursue a political agenda,” he added.
