Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is pressing the court to make former President Donald Trump pay more than $1 million in legal fees for a rejected lawsuit against her.
Clinton’s legal team argued that they deserved reimbursement from Trump after the ex-president filed a lawsuit that claimed she and others peddled false allegations that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia as a “political stunt.”
NEW: Hillary Clinton asked a judge to order former President Donald Trump and his lawyers to pay a total of more than $1 million in legal fees & costs to several defendants he falsely accused of conspiring to undermine his term in officehttps://t.co/UK6VBDY0uI via @bpolitics
— Erik Larson (@eelarson) November 1, 2022
“Because of the particularly vexatious and frivolous nature of the Complaint and Amended Complaint in this case, the Court should use its inherent authority [to] … impose sanctions on Plaintiff himself for the filing of both the original and amended Complaint,” Clinton’s team wrote.
Trump, who amended his suit in June, maintained that he suffered over $24 million in losses from the innuendo about possible collusion between him and Russia. But U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks in Florida dismissed the case last month due to “deficiencies in the plaintiff’s argument.”
Trump lawyer Alina Habba slammed the motion filed by the Clinton team, which was “conveniently” filed less than a week before the midterm elections.
“We vehemently deny the inflammatory allegations contained in the sanctions motion filed by the Clinton team,” Habba said. “This motion, conveniently filed one week prior to Election Day, is nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt to score political points.”
This comes as Democrats like Clinton ramp up their attacks on Trump supporters and Republicans in fear of losing the majority in both houses of Congress during the midterms. Two months ago, Clinton likened former President Donald Trump’s supporters to Nazis and Trump himself to Adolf Hitler.
“I remember as a young student, you know, trying to figure out how people get basically drawn in by Hitler. How did that happen? I’d watch newsreels and I’d see this guy standing up there ranting and raving, and people shouting and raising their arms. I thought, ‘What’s happened to these people?'” Clinton said at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Texas.
Despite their efforts, Democrats are still projected to lose the Nov. 8 elections, as the latest NYT/Siena College survey found that 49 percent of voters are more likely to vote for a Republican candidate in the midterms, compared to the 45 percent who plan to vote for a Democrat.
