A Florida federal judge has tossed out the voluminous and wide-ranging lawsuit ex-president Donald Trump filed against his 2016 election rival and a host of other figures associated with the investigation into whether his presidential campaign had improper ties to the Russian government.
US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks on Thursday dismissed the former president’s case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled, against most of the myriad defendants named in the lawsuit.
Mr Trump sued former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, and numerous ex-FBI, Justice Department, and Democratic Party figures under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act in March 2022. He sought millions of dollars in damages for having “maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty”.
In the 65-page opinion and order handed down late Thursday, Judge Middlebrooks begins by saying Mr Trump’s complaint “is difficult to summarize in a concise and cohesive manner” as it was “certainly not presented that way.”
The judge goes on to say Mr Trump’s characterisations of the events referred to in his lawsuit “are implausible because they lack any specific allegations which might provide factual support for the conclusions reached”.
“What the Amended Complaint lacks in substance and legal support it seeks to substitute with length, hyperbole, and the settling of scores and grievances,” he wrote, adding that it did not appear that many of the references to other material sprinkled throughout the ex-president’s court papers had been “presented in good faith and with evidentiary support”.
Continuing, Judge Middlebrooks added that Mr Trump’s claims were “not only unsupported by any legal authority” but were also “plainly foreclosed by binding precedent as set forth by the Supreme Court and the Eleventh Circuit”.
Perhaps most witheringly, the judge points out that Mr Trump’s “perplexingly” wrote that the defendants obstructed investigation Crossfire Hurricane “by contributing to the initiation of Crossfire Hurricane.”
“That Defendants could have obstructed a proceeding by initiating it defies logic,” wrote Judge Middlebrooks of the FBI’s investigation into Russian election interference.
