Trump asks US Supreme Court to reinstate lawsuit against Clinton — TimesLIVE
US President Donald Trump has asked the US Supreme Court to reinstate a dismissed lawsuit against his 2016 election rival Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey and others. As TimesLIVE reports, Trump claims that the defendants allegedly conspired to link his election campaign to Russia in order to influence the 2016 election.
Dismissed lawsuit and sanctions
Trump filed the lawsuit in federal court in Florida in 2022, when he was not serving as president following his defeat in the 2020 election. The defendants also included former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, the Democratic National Committee and other individuals.
The lawsuit alleged that Clinton and her allies promoted an allegedly false version of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia. In particular, the filing contained accusations of racketeering and conspiracy to cause harm through false statements.
District Judge Donald Middlebrooks dismissed the case, noting, among other things, that Trump filed some of the claims too late. The judge compared the lawsuit to a “two-hundred-page political manifesto” setting out grievances against Trump’s opponents. Later, Middlebrooks ordered Trump and his lead attorney in the case, Alina Habba, to pay nearly $1 million in legal costs and fees.
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Arguments of the parties
The judge stated that the lawsuit was aimed at improperly advancing a political narrative and pointed to abuse of legal procedures, knowingly false factual claims and unfounded legal theories. The US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta upheld both the dismissal of the lawsuit and the sanctions in 2025.
In their petition to the Supreme Court, lawyers for Trump and Habba said that the deadline for filing the lawsuit should have been extended because Trump postponed litigation during his first presidential term in order to fulfill his constitutional duties. They also said that Supreme Court intervention is needed to protect the presidency.
The 2019 investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller found that Russia, an aggressor state, systematically interfered in the 2016 US presidential election. At the same time, it did not establish that members of Trump’s campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government regarding election interference.
