“Despite being alerted to the many deficiencies in the initial Complaint by one round of motions to dismiss, Plaintiff and his counsel pressed forward on an Amended Complaint that fixed none of the problems, and instead simply added more invective and irrelevant factual allegations to what was already a ’shotgun' pleading. The Court should not countenance the abuse of its resources—or allow significant burdens to be imposed on Defendants, many of them individuals who have devoted their careers to public service—in service of Plaintiff’s political stunt.”
Other defendants included ex-British spy Christopher Steele, who authored the dossier; Fusion GPS founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, who hired Steele on behalf of Clinton and other Democrats; and Igor Danchenko, a Russian national who has bragged that he was responsible for the bulk of the material in the dossier.
But U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks, a President Bill Clinton appointee, ruled in September that the complaint presented claims that “are not warranted under existing law.”
Trump appealed the determination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, while the defendants began asking for sanctions.
Dolan entered the first motion for sanctions in October, pointing out that the first complaint falsely said he was a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and the updated filing said he chaired a “national democratic political organization” despite the fact that he never has. In response, Trump’s lawyers noted that, according to special counsel John Durham, Dolan was the chairman of a national Democrat group.
Clinton, Schultz, former Clinton campaign officials John Podesta and Robby Mook, Danchenko, and others joined the motion in the Oct. 31 filing, charging that reasonable lawyers would have never filed the lawsuit, “let alone continued to prosecute it after multiple Defendants’ motions to dismiss highlighted its fundamental and incurable defects.”
The suit quotes Alina Habba, one of Trump’s lawyers, who recounted during a TV appearance that Trump told her that “you’re not going to win” after Middlebrooks declined to recuse himself.
“And I said, no, we have to fight. It’s not right what happened. And you know, he was right, and it’s a sad day for me personally because I fought him on and I should have listened, but I don’t want to lose hope in our system,” Habba said.
That quote and others like it “make clear that this suit was filed as a political tool and in order to fight back at Plaintiff’s perceived political enemies,” the sanctions motion states, claiming that the recusal motion itself was frivolous.
Middlebrooks said in his ruling that the suit was a “political manifesto outlining [Trump’s] grievances against those that have opposed him, and this Court is not the appropriate forum.”
The motion asks for $1.074 million to cover attorney fees, including attorneys for Clinton, Mook, and Danchenko.
“We vehemently deny the inflammatory allegations contained in the sanctions motion filed by the Clinton team. This motion, conveniently filed one week prior to election day, is nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt to score political points,” Habba said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times. “This motion is particularly inappropriate, given that our client’s case will soon be reviewed by the 11th Circuit. We will oppose this motion and trust that the Court will see through this ruse.”
