(Headline USA) Hillary Clinton filed a petition this week demanding that former President Donald Trump cover her $1.06 million in legal fees after a lawsuit he filed against her was rejected.
Trump filed a massive racketeering lawsuit that accused Clinton and others of peddling false allegations about Russian collusion against his 2016 campaign. Christopher Steele, the author of the debunked anti-Trump Steele dossier, was also listed as a defendant.
In the suit, Trump claimed he suffered more than $24 million in losses due to Clinton’s allegations of Russian collusion. However, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks — appointed by former President Bill Clinton — dismissed the case, arguing that there were glaring “deficiencies in the plaintiff’s argument.”
Middlebrooks said the suit was more like a “200-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him,” saying the court was not the “appropriate forum” to hash out the debate.
Trump has appealed Middlebrooks’ ruling.
Clinton sought to toss the suit this summer, slamming it as a “political stunt.” After Middlebrooks’s decision, she filed a petition claiming Trump should be on the line for her legal fees.
“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,” her legal team wrote.
“A reasonable attorney would never have filed this suit, let alone continued to prosecute it after multiple Defendants’ motions to dismiss highlighted its fundamental and incurable defects,” the petition continued.
Citing comments that Trump lawyer Alina Habba made on Newsmax earlier this year in which she characterized Clinton as a “political enemy,” Clinton claimed the suit was overtly political.
Habba, however, denied the Clinton team’s allegations and slammed the petition.
“We vehemently deny the inflammatory allegations contained in the sanctions motion filed by the Clinton team,” Habba told Bloomberg. “This motion, conveniently filed one week prior to Election Day, is nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt to score political points.”
