Former President Donald Trump is appealing a federal judge’s decision last month to dismiss his sprawling lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, several former FBI officials and more than a dozen other people and entities he alleges conspired to to undermine his campaign in 2016. by trying to smear him with fabricated information that tied him to Russia.
Trump’s lawyers filed a statement Tuesday saying they are appealing to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks dismissed Trump’s lawsuit, saying “most of plaintiff’s claims are not only unsupported by any legal authority, but are clearly barred by binding precedent.”
“What (Trump’s lawsuit) lacks in substance and legal support it seeks to make up for in length, hyperbole and the settling of accounts and grievances,” wrote Middlebrooks, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton.
Trump filed his sprawling lawsuit in March, naming a wide cast of characters Trump has accused for years of orchestrating a “deep state” conspiracy against him — including former FBI Director James Comey and other FBI officials, retired British spy Christopher Steele and associates and a handful of Clinton campaign advisers.
More than 108 pages long, the lawsuit ensnared many of Trump’s political opponents and highlighted grievances he has complained about for years. He alleged that Democratic and government officials committed a range of crimes, from racketeering conspiracy to malicious prosecution, computer fraud and theft of classified information on the Internet.
While the Clinton campaign paid investigators to dig up dirt on Trump and Russia, and well-connected Democrats took some of their findings to law enforcement, many of the key elements of Trump’s sweeping accusations in the lawsuit have previously been debunked by the Inspector General of the Department of Justice and by a bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Special counsel John Durham has, over the past three years, investigated many of the behaviors Trump cited in his lawsuit. But Durham hasn’t gone as far as Trump claims.
In fact, Durham has delivered nothing in more than three years that resembles the Watergate-level indictments that Trump has repeatedly said are coming. He secured only a guilty plea from an FBI lawyer. Durham’s only other case, against a Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer, ended in an acquittal.
The final expected trial of Durham’s probe began Tuesday and focused on the infamous “Steele dossier,” which upended U.S. politics after the 2016 election, fueled the FBI’s investigation into possible Trump-Russia collusion and continues to be cited by former President Donald Trump as proof. of a grand conspiracy to destroy his political career.
