Irrefragable logic by 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge William Holcombe Pryaor, Jr., dismissing President DONALD JOJN TRUMP's meritless racketeering lawsuit against Hillary Rodham Clinton, upholding nearly one million in monetary sanctions to be paid by DJT. TRUMP and his termagant attorney, ALINA HABBA will have to pay Hillary Clinton o $937,989.39 for violating federal rules against frivolous complaints. Is TRUMP nuttier than a fruitcake? How about his accomplices? You tell me. From Courthouse News Service:
11th Circuit rejects Trump's attempt to revive Hillary Clinton conspiracy
Citing untimeliness and bad faith in the president’s lawsuit over Hillary Clinton's claims of Russian collusion during the 2016 election, an appeals panel also upheld nearly $1 million in sanctions against Trump.
(CN) — In the latest blow to President Donald Trump’s campaign of political retribution, the 11th Circuit largely upheld a lower court’s decision to throw out a sprawling lawsuit accusing Hillary Clinton and dozens of others of orchestrating a conspiracy to falsely link him to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
In a unanimous decision Wednesday, the appeals court agreed Trump’s claims were untimely and meritless and affirmed nearly $1 million in sanctions against Trump and his lead attorney for filing a frivolous case in bad faith.
The ruling was published just eight days after the appeals panel heard oral arguments in Birmingham, Alabama. There, Chief U.S. Circuit Judge William Pryor called the lawsuit a “classic shotgun pleading.” But in the court’s order, Pryor denied that was the reason for the dismissal.
Instead, the panel acknowledged Trump’s concerns about the defendants’ conduct during the 2016 election — particularly in light of the 2023 Durham Report — yet still determined “those findings do not cure the deficiencies in Trump’s racketeering claims.”
The judges affirmed the dismissal of most claims because they were filed too late under the applicable time limits. For the federal racketeering claims, which have a four-year deadline, the court found Trump knew or should have known about his purported injuries by October 2017, based on public reports and his own statements. Yet he waited until March 2022 to sue, missing the cutoff by five months.
The panel rejected Trump’s arguments that the clock should have paused: Statutory tolling didn’t apply because related government actions, like probes into campaign finance or false statements by individuals such as Michael Sussmann, weren’t directly tied to racketeering. Tolling for extraordinary circumstances also failed, as Trump’s presidency wasn’t a valid excuse. The judges cited a Supreme Court precedent refusing to shield President Bill Clinton from lawsuits during his term, emphasizing that presidents aren’t immune from civil proceedings.
“Trump unpersuasively argues that two ‘circumstances’ support his request,” wrote Pryor, a George W. Bush appointee. “First, he points to the workload he faced during his first term. But it is hard to see how his presidential workload differs from any other modern president, and those concerns did not arrest the Supreme Court in [Clinton v. Jones]. Second, Trump argues that he was unable to seek relief in court while in office because, if he had filed this lawsuit during the Mueller or Durham investigations, ‘it would have looked like [he] was interfering with law enforcement functions.’
“This argument gives away the game,” Pryor continued. “Trump concedes that he chose not to bring this lawsuit because he made a ‘presidential decision to put constitutional duties and obligations to the country first.’ That concession controls our decision … Without statutory or equitable tolling, Trump failed to state a timely claim of racketeering or conspiracy.”
For the Florida state tort claims, the court said Trump forfeited his challenges by not properly contesting key rulings, such as failing to prove special damages for injurious falsehood or showing an actual prosecution for the malicious prosecution conspiracy. Even without forfeiture, the judges noted Trump’s claims lacked merit, with many statements protected as free speech and no underlying legal wrongs to support conspiracies.
On jurisdiction, the panel agreed the Florida trial judge lacked authority over U.K.-based Orbis Business Intelligence, run by Christopher Steele, because Trump served the company abroad, violating the racketeering law’s nationwide service rules. However, the judges found jurisdiction proper over defendants Rodney Joffe and Charles Dolan, rejecting the lower court’s contrary view.
The appeals court strongly backed the monetary sanctions, finding no abuse of discretion by U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks. As one example of a shotgun pleading, the panel cited 633 paragraphs Trump submitted to support a single claim of injurious falsehood.
“We consider that abuse of judicial resources sanctionable,” Pryor wrote, adding that the amended complaint “recklessly forwards frivolous legal theories.”
The panel further found Special Counsel John Durham’s 2023 report wasn’t “extraordinary” enough to reopen the case, as its key facts were already known and couldn’t fix the lawsuit’s core flaws like timeliness.
“The release of a long-expected report is hardly extraordinary, especially when the movants fail to identify a single material fact in the report previously unknown to them,” Pryor wrote.
The court also denied motions by Orbis and Dolan for additional appellate sanctions against Trump, noting that while some arguments were frivolous, his challenges to jurisdiction had merit and the appeal was not wholly baseless. Finally, the judges ruled the lower court lacked authority to consider Trump’s second disqualification motion against Middlebrooks — claiming the Bill Clinton appointee was biased — because the case was already on appeal.
Pryor was joined on the panel by U.S. Circuit Judges Andrew Brasher and Embry Kidd, appointees of Trump and Joe Biden, respectively. Their ruling comes just two days after a separate federal court dismissed Trump’s criminal indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
No comments:
Post a Comment