Comment A federal judge on Thursday fined former President Donald Trump’s lawyers more than $66,000 and warned them that they filed frivolous and unsubstantiated claims in Trump’s defamation case against Hillary Clinton and her allies dating back to the 2016 presidential election. The fines imposed by Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks, appointed by President Bill Clinton to the Southern District of Florida, include a $50,000 court fine and an additional payment of $16,274.23 to one of the 29 defendants in the case, Charles Dolan, for costs incurred as a result of the lawsuit, which the judge dismissed in September. The defamation suit accused 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her allies of damaging Trump with an orchestrated scheme to spread false information that his campaign colluded with Russia. Middlebrooks, in dismissing the lawsuit in September, had written that there were “obvious structural flaws in the plaintiff’s argument.” Two of Trump’s lawyers – Alina Habba and Peter Ticktin – have signaled they will appeal. “We tried to right a wrong and our reward is a kick in the teeth,” Ticktin said in an email. “Ultimately, this will be decided by a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, as we believe the dismissal and subsequent sanctions will ultimately be reversed.” The other attorneys, Michael T. Madaio and Jamie Alan Sasson, did not immediately return emails from The Post. The fines are the latest legal setback for Trump. Federal officials are investigating him for taking sensitive government documents after leaving the White House, and officials in Manhattan are scrutinizing the financial records of his large real estate business. Last month, a federal judge in a separate case said Trump signed legal documents he knew included false voter fraud numbers The fines also come as Republicans and the conservative media openly blamed Trump for the GOP’s poor performance in Tuesday’s midterm elections, which Trump hoped would show his electoral clout ahead of an expected announcement next week that he would was running for president in 2024. In the lawsuit, Trump’s lawyers had inaccurately described Dolan in court documents as a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, a senior Clinton campaign official and a close associate and adviser to Clinton. Trump’s lawsuit also accused Dolan, a public relations executive, of helping create a “dossier” of false information designed to defame Trump. In response, a lawyer for Dolan asked that his client be removed from the lawsuit, noting in court documents that Dolan was not involved in creating the dossier, was never DNC chairman and said his role in the campaign was, as he wrote Middlebrooks, “was limited to knocking on doors as a volunteer.” Clinton, through a spokesman, denied knowing him, Middlebrooks wrote. Trump’s lawyers subsequently amended their complaint but did not substantially change their allegations against Dolan, the judge wrote. The amended complaint referred to Dolan as the former president of a “national Democratic political organization” and a “senior Clinton campaign official,” Middlebrooks wrote. Criticisms about that amended complaint “fall unheeded,” the judge wrote. In imposing the fines on Trump’s lawyers, Middlebrooks invoked Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which, the judge wrote, is intended to prevent “lawyers and litigants from clogging up federal courts with frivolous filings.” . Middlebrooks wrote that sanctions under this rule are necessary when a party files a pleading “that has no reasonable basis in fact,” is “based on a legal theory that has no reasonable prospect of success,” or when a pleading is filed “in bad faith . » “Here, all three are true,” Middlebrooks wrote. Later, he added, “The pleadings in this case contained factual allegations that were either knowingly false or made in reckless disregard of the truth.” As an example, Middlebrooks pointed to a detail presented by Trump’s lawyers that said Dolan was a Florida resident. Dolan’s attorney noted that his client was a resident of Virginia and did not campaign in Florida. Trump’s lawyers strangely responded in the amended complaint that Dolan was a resident of New York and that “Charles Dolan is an incredibly common name, and traditional plaintiff’s attorney search methods have identified countless individuals of that name across the country.” , many of whom reside in New York.”
