Federal Judge Donald Middlebrooks has imposed financial penalties of nearly $1 million on former President Donald Trump and his attorney Alina Habba, reportedly making Habba’s firm also liable for the costs.
“This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start,” Middlebrooks said in a portion of his new findings highlighted by CNN. “No reasonable lawyer would have filed it. Intended for a political purpose, none of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim.”
The sanctions connect to an already failed lawsuit from Trump in which he alleged Hillary Clinton and a slew of others, like former top official at the FBI James Comey, engaged in a conspiracy to undermine his 2016 bid for president with claims of ties to and collusion with Russia. Middlebrooks denounced the underlying arguments represented by that case as politically oriented and not representative of the basic facts, like how a late announcement by Comey of further developments in the probe of Clinton’s private email use actually harmed her campaign via driving negative press coverage. “He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer,” Middlebrooks said of Trump in a passage of his ruling highlighted by The Washington Post. “He knew full well the impact of his actions.” The amount for which Trump and Habba are now responsible is $937,989.39.
Over two dozen individuals and entities were originally looped in by Trump’s sweeping case, which obviously sounds like it tread rhetorical ground largely similar to what the now former president rants about on his alternative social media platform Truth Social and elsewhere on a nearly daily basis. The problem is that you can’t just transfer a string of barely comprehensible jabs on social media to a court and expect some kind of swift resolution. In an example of this, Trump’s original arguments claimed the final report from the Russia investigation led by Robert Mueller outlined he was exonerated, which he has also alleged outside of the judicial process. That’s not what Mueller did. He himself made specifically no conclusion on obstruction and decided against charges of criminal conspiracy over the ties Trump had to Russia, which isn’t the same as a full exoneration.
“Mr. Trump is using the courts as a stage set for political theater and grievance,” Middlebrooks said. “This behavior interferes with the ability of the judiciary to perform its constitutional duty.” Elsewhere, Habba is also helping lead Trump’s legal defense in litigation brought by writer E. Jean Carroll over an incident of sexual assault Carroll says Trump perpetrated against her in the 1990s. Portions of a deposition taken of Trump amid that litigation are now available, showing him confirm he wrote and posted contested statements to Truth Social in late 2022 that later became the subject of additional defamation claims from Carroll against the former president. He also said under oath he stuck by past statements he made similarly maligning the writer.
