A federal judge has tossed a lawsuit Donald Trump filed against Hillary Clinton in March, accusing Clinton and other high-profile Democrats of orchestrating a “malicious conspiracy” by linking his 2016 presidential campaign to Russian meddling in the election.
In a Thursday ruling, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks ripped the suit as a legally deficient “two-hundred-page political manifesto” that Trump’s lawyers couldn’t even present “in a concise and cohesive manner.”
Middlebrooks wrote: “What the [lawsuit] lacks in substance and legal support it seeks to substitute with length, hyperbole, and the settling of scores and grievances.”
He added that the “court is not the appropriate forum” for Trump’s complaint, which was rife with “glaring problems” and claims “not warranted under existing law.”
What’s more, Middlebrooks found that many of Trump’s claims were unsubstantiated at best.
“Many of the amended complaint’s characterizations of events are implausible,” he wrote, “because they lack any specific allegations which might provide factual support for the conclusions reached.”
Trump sought upwards of $21 million in damages, at one point asking for more than $72 million.
Despite repeated denials of what he calls the “Russia hoax,” multiple investigations found that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election to hurt Clinton and aid Trump.
At one point, Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort even shared internal Trump campaign polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence officer.
Manafort was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison in 2019 after pleading guilty to conspiracy against the U.S. and another of conspiracy to obstruct justice. Trump pardoned him after he lost the 2020 election.
Many of the accusations in Trump’s 108-page lawsuit had already been debunked in a 2020 bipartisan report from the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee.
Trump attorney Alina Habba told CNN they planned to appeal the ruling.
“We vehemently disagree with the opinion issued by the court today,” Habba said in a statement. “Not only is it rife with erroneous applications of the law, it disregards the numerous independent governmental investigations which substantiate our claim that the defendants conspired to falsely implicate our client and undermine the 2016 presidential election.”