Bloomberg
A federal judge in Florida dismissed a lawsuit filed by former president Donald Trump that blamed Hillary Clinton and others for conspiring to malign his character.
Trump’s suit accused more than two dozen defendants of orchestrating “a malicious
conspiracy to disseminate patently false and injurious information about Donald J. Trump and his campaign, all in the hopes of destroying his life, his political career and rigging the 2016 Presidential Election in favor of Hillary Clinton.†It was filed in March under the civil version of a racketeering law normally used against
organized crime.
The suit was amended in June to include new details from Special Counsel John Durham’s failed prosecution of longtime Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann, who was accused of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation while providing a Trump-Russia tip just before the 2016 election.
“At its core, the problem with plaintiff’s amended complaint is that plaintiff is not attempting to seek redress for any legal harm; instead, he is seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him, and this court is not the appropriate forum,†US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks, appointed to the bench by Bill Clinton, said in a
65-page order.
Lawyers for Trump didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment on the
dismissal.
The ruling comes as Trump is engaged in other legal battles in the state. Another judge in the Southern District of Florida is due to receive a filing Friday from the Justice Department and Trump lawyers proposing options for a special master to review materials seized by the FBI during its August 8 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.