YES!!! COURT OF APPEALS UPHOLDS SANCTIONS AGAINST TRUMP AND ALINA HABBA FOR BRINGING FRIVOLOUS BAD FAITH LAWSUIT AGAINST HILLARY AND OTHERS
Oh my darlings, you are going to so love this! Well, at least some of you will – the ones who don’t probably aren’t really my darlings.
Waaaaay back in March of 2022, Trump filed a lawsuit, using Alina Habba’s law firm, against Hillary Clinton, and a whole lot of other people including Marc Elias and my friend Rodney Joffe, and besmirching Perkins Coie for good measure, claiming a whole lot of things that amounted to “they swayed public sentiment and helped steal the election with dastardly deeds.”
(This Complaint, along with the glorious documents I discuss here, are included for Notes from the Front members.)
In near record time, in September of 2022, the judge, Judge Donald Middlebrooks, *dismissed* the case!
First he notes that the plaintiffs (Trump) completely ignored the rule that a complaint filed in Federal court *must* contain “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief” and that “Each allegation must be simple, concise, and direct.” He then observes that Trump’s complaint was 193 pages long! But he’s just getting started.
Judge Middlebrooks goes on to say that “More troubling, the claims presented in the Amended Complaint are not warranted under existing law. In fact, they are foreclosed by existing precedent, including decisions of the Supreme Court. To illustrate, I highlight here just two glaring problems with the Amended Complaint. There are many others. But these are emblematic of the audacity of Plaintiff’s legal theories and the manner in which they clearly contravene binding case law.”
He then goes into just some of the deficiencies in the Complaint, and then dismisses the entire case!
And *that’s* when some of the defendants filed motions for monetary *sanctions* against Trump and Habba.
And Judge Middlebrooks *granted* some of those sanctions, to the tune of nearly $1million, all told.
And of course that’s when Trump filed a motion to disqualify Judge Middlebrooks (he lost that motion too).
In a beautiful, beautiful, BEAUTIFUL order on one of the motions for sanctions, issued in January of 2023 (and included for Notes from the Front members), Judge Middelbrooks *opens* with:
“This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it. Intended for a political purpose, none of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim.”
(snort)
He then goes on to say that “Thirty-one individuals and entities were needlessly harmed in order to dishonestly advance a political narrative. A continuing pattern of misuse of the courts by Mr. Trump and his lawyers undermines the rule of law, portrays judges as partisans, and diverts resources from those who have suffered actual legal harm.”
In this 46-page opinion and order for sanctions he also quotes Alina Habba (yes, *that* Alina Habba) from an interview on Fox where she says “You can’t make this up. You literally cannot make a story like this up . . . and President Trump is just not going to take it anymore. If you are going to make up lies, if you are going to try to take him down, he is going to fight you back. And that is what this is, this is the beginning of all that.”
…making clear that this lawsuit is *politically* motivated, and having no basis in.. you know… law.
Of course Trump appealed those sanctions orders.
At the end of this past November (so about six months ago) the Court of Appeals handed down its decision on Trump’s appeal, *upholding* the sanctions (that 36-page opinion also included for Notes from the Front members).
Now, do you remember what we’ve learned about Courts of Appeal? Usually a subset of their judges (for example a panel of three judges) decide an appeal. And, as you will recall, the loser (and I mean that in all ways here) can apply to have the *full* panel of *all* of the Circuit Court judges (or at least more of the judges, in some circuits) re-consider the case, and that is called an “en banc” hearing. You will also remember that in order to trigger an en banc hearing one of the Court of Appeals judges has to request it on behalf of the loser, so to sort of sponsor or champion it.
So, the loser here applied to have his appeal reheard en banc. And this was the order in response, just yesterday:
“The Petition for Rehearing En Banc is DENIED, no judge in regular active service on the Court having requested that the Court be polled on rehearing en banc.”
In other words:
THE SANCTIONS STAND!
Notes from the Front members: The original Complaint, the Dismissal, the two Sanctions Orders (including the awesome one from which I quoted above), the Court of Appeals decision, and the en banc denial, are all in your inbox now!
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