Trump Lawyers Hit With Sanctions For Filing Stupid Lawsuit Alleging Clinton Rigged The Election She Lost
About 18 months after he lost the 2020 election, Election Conspiracist in Chief Donald Trump sued Hillary Clinton and dozens of other Democrats over the election he had won nearly six years earlier.
That lawsuit went nowhere. But going nowhere meant tying up a lot of the court's time, what with Trump's lawyers dumping 193-page complaints onto the docket and targeting more than 30 defendants with a bizarre set of allegations claiming the election, that Trump won, had been rigged. That such an alleged rigging would result in Trump's victory suggests either the defendants secretly wanted Trump to win or, more logically, that the plaintiff was full of shit.
The district court ruled against Trump roughly six months after the lawsuit was filed, finding that it was not only not the RICO (yes, that was in there too), but it wasn't anything else either, no matter how many words Trump's lawyers had tossed together in exceedingly long legal filings.
The lawyers representing Trump in this ridiculous waste of publicly funded time are now being hit with sanctions by the court that had the misfortune of handling this lawsuit. They will join a long list of other lawyers currently or formerly employed by the former president who have been fined or sued for engaging in baseless lawsuits over election results.
The sanction order [PDF] helpfully lists the offending legal professionals right up front, allowing readers to avoid accidentally seeking representation from this group of lawyers who decided to shed their respectability to engage in extremely performative litigation.
Defendant Charles Dolan has moved for sanctions pursuant to Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Upon review of the motion (DE 268), Plaintiff's response (DE 270) and Defendant's reply (DE 276), and for the reasons explained below, the motion is granted. Accordingly, sanctions shall be awarded jointly and severally against Alina Habba, Michael T. Madaio, Habba Madaio & Associates, Peter Ticktin, Jamie Alan Sasson, and The Ticktin Law Group.
That's who is getting sanctioned. Here's why: mainly it's all the lying.
The pleadings in this case contained factual allegations that were either knowingly false or made in reckless disregard for the truth. The following examples are indicative.
When suing someone it helps to know where they live, as this can have subject matter or personal jurisdiction significance. In this case for instance, Mr. Dolan argued that he engaged in no activities in Florida that made him susceptible to suit here. He filed an affidavit stating under oath that he lived in Virginia. His lawyers advised Mr. Trump's lawyers of that. Moreover, the summons in this case indicated an Arlington, Virginia address and the return of service indicated he was served there. Yet the Amended Complaint alleged that Mr. Dolan was a resident of New York. The Trump lawyers' answer:
[I]t must be noted that Charles Dolan is an incredibly common name, and Plaintiff's counsel's traditional search methods identified countless individuals with said name across the country, many of whom reside in New York.
While alone not of great significance, this response reflects the cavalier attitude towards facts demonstrated throughout the case.
Just one of many problems with the allegations. Those are things in court cases that are supposed to be factual. These weren't. Trump's legal reps couldn't seem to decide whether Dolan was the head of the Democratic National Committee, a senior Clinton Campaign official, or just someone who happened to be in the racketeering business of keeping Trump out of office. The lawsuit cherry-picked information from a government indictment in an attempt to portray Dolan's statements to investigators as deliberate lies deployed to further a conspiracy against Trump. None of this was true and pretty much everything alleged was either provably false or entirely inaccurate.
The court sums it up this way:
In short, I find that Mr. Trump's lawyers were warned about the lack of foundation for their factual contentions, turned a blind eye towards information in their possession, and misrepresented the Danchenko Indictment they claim as their primary support. The lawyers failed to conduct a pre-filing inquiry into the allegations against Mr. Dolan and have continued to advance Plaintiff's false claims based upon nothing but conjecture, speculation, and guesswork. This is precisely the conduct Rule 11 is intended to deter.
And it's not just limited to Dolan. There may well be more sanctions on the way.
None of the claims against him-or any other defendant for that matter-had any chance of success, and this weighs strongly in favor of imposing Rule 11 sanctions.
And this is the magnificent beatdown that precedes the final bill:
Not just initiated by a shotgun pleading, this was a shotgun lawsuit. Thirty-one individuals and organizations were summoned to court, forced to hire lawyers to defend against frivolous claims. The only common thread against them was Mr. Trump's animus.
Plaintiff deliberately misrepresented public documents by selectively using some portions while omitting other information including findings and conclusions that contradicted his narrative. This occurred with the Danchenko Indictment, the Department of Justice Inspector General's Report for Operation Hurricane, and the Mueller Report. It was too frequent to be accidental.
Every claim was frivolous, most barred by settled, well-established existing law. These were political grievances masquerading as legal claims. This cannot be attributed to incompetent lawyering. It was a deliberate use of the judicial system to pursue a political agenda.
The final total is $50,000 in sanctions and $16,274.23 to repay Charles Dolan's legal fees and costs. It's not a lot - not when spread across several lawyers and law firms. But this may not be the end of it. The court expresses its doubts this order will deter future performative lawyering in service of bad faith litigation.
The rule of law is undermined by the toxic combination of political fundraising with legal fees paid by political action committees, reckless and factually untrue statements by lawyers at rallies and in the media, and efforts to advance a political narrative through lawsuits without factual basis or any cognizable legal theory. Lawyers are enabling this behavior and I am pessimistic that Rule 11 alone can effectively stem this abuse. Aspects may be beyond the purview of the judiciary, requiring attention of the Bar and disciplinary authorities. Additional sanctions may be appropriate.
If those sanctions ever arrive, they may not matter either. These lawsuits have been crafted to play to Trump's base. And his base seems more than willing to fund lawsuits that treat conspiracy theories as factual allegations. The legal reps sanctioned here will likely use this as more evidence" that the entire system is rigged and will make guest appearances on far right new services to expound on their martyrdom. The only real winner here is Charles Dolan, who will be reimbursed for having the misfortune of appearing on Trump's radar. But, until the political climate changes or sanctions with some real teeth in them are handed down, we all lose when jackasses treat courts like soapboxes.