Chief judge corners Trump lawyer on failure of 'hopelessly complicated' Hillary Clinton RICO lawsuit on appeal

Source: Law & Crime

Nov 18th, 2025, 1:38 pm


President Donald Trump's private legal team returned to court on Tuesday with the hope of convincing the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to revive a thoroughly dismantled civil RICO lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and a collection of Democrats and entities he blamed for conspiring to bankroll "an unthinkable plot" to tar the 2016 Trump campaign, cloud his first term through "a sinister link" to Russia, and harm his business interests.

In March 2022, while special counsel John Durham's criminal investigation of the Russia investigation was ongoing, Trump filed the RICO suit against Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, "Steele Dossier" compiler Christopher Steele's company Orbis Business Intelligence, Fusion GPS, and many other high-profile defendants who were later removed from the case.

Multiple efforts to disqualify U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks, a Bill Clinton appointee, failed, and the judge wrote he had "never met or spoken with" the Clintons before he tossed out the revamped version of the case, which included basic mistakes, in 2023. Sanctions against Trump lawyers followed, as Middlebrooks found the amended complaint was a "shotgun pleading" that substituted substance "with length, hyperbole, and the settling of scores and grievances," producing a "frivolous" and "harmful" case.

"This is a deliberate attempt to harass; to tell a story without regard to facts," Middlebrooks wrote. "In order to understand the scope of this abuse, multiply the above discussion by thirty-one defendants and their lawyers, forced to try to analyze and defend against the sprawling Complaints. I sifted through the thread of allegations against each defendant only to find they added up to no cognizable claim. And the pleadings were drafted in a way to disguise that fact."

Read more: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/trump-v-clinton-returns-to-appellate-court-after-dismissal-and-sanctions/