The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit effectively ended Donald Trump’s sprawling lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee on Wednesday, affirming the dismissal of the case and upholding nearly $1 million in sanctions against the President and his legal team.
In a ruling penned by Chief Judge William Pryor, the three-judge panel rejected Trump’s claims that the 2016 Clinton campaign engaged in a racketeering conspiracy to falsely tie him to Russia. The court ruled that Trump’s lawsuit was not only legally baseless but filed far too late, missing the statute of limitations by several years.
Perhaps most significantly for the plaintiffs, the appellate court refused to overturn the massive financial penalty imposed by the lower court.
The District Court had previously ordered Trump and his lead attorney, Alina Habba, to pay $937,989.39 in legal fees and costs to the defendants. The lower court judge, Donald Middlebrooks, had characterized the lawsuit as a “shotgun pleading” filed in bad faith for political purposes—a finding the Eleventh Circuit said was not made in error.
“We discern no clear error in the shotgun pleadings findings,” Judge Pryor wrote, noting that the complaint forced the courts to sift through hundreds of paragraphs of irrelevant or conclusory allegations. The opinion further stated that the lawsuit “recklessly forwards frivolous legal theories.”
Trump’s legal team had attempted to revive the case by pointing to the “Durham Report“—the findings of Special Counsel John Durham regarding the origins of the FBI’s Russia investigation—as newly discovered evidence. The appellate judges dismissed this argument, noting that while the report criticized the FBI, it did not cure the fundamental legal defects, such as the timing, that doomed Trump’s RICO claims.
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The court also rejected Trump’s argument that the statute of limitations should have been paused, or “tolled,” while he was serving as president. The opinion pointed out that Trump conceded he made a “political decision” not to sue while in office, rather than being legally prevented from doing so.
There was one minor procedural victory for the Trump legal team. The court ruled that the claims against Orbis Business Intelligence—the firm founded by former British spy Christopher Steele—should have been dismissed “without prejudice” rather than “with prejudice.” This was a technical correction based on the fact that the firm was not properly served with the lawsuit in England. However, the dismissal of the claims remains in effect.
While the court upheld the original million-dollar sanction, it declined a request from two defendants to impose fresh sanctions for the appeal itself.
The ruling marks a decisive defeat in Trump’s attempt to litigate the narrative of the 2016 election, confirming that he and his counsel are jointly liable for the seven-figure penalty.
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