(FreedomBeacon.com)- Lawyers representing former President Donald Trump in a lawsuit he filed against Hillary Clinton and a few other Democrats have been slapped with a $50,000 fine.
A federal judge imposed the fine on Trump’s legal team, admonishing them for what he termed a “frivolous” lawsuit that failed in court.
In making the announcement, Judge Donald Middlebrooks of U.S. District Court in Florida, said Trump’s legal team’s “cavalier attitude towards facts demonstrated throughout the case” is what warranted the fine. The $50,000 will go toward paying penalties to the court for the lawsuit.
In addition, Alina Habba and Peter Ticktin, two of the attorneys who led the case for Trump, were also ordered to pay $16,274.23 for legal fees to Charles Dolan, who was one of the defendants who was named in Trump’s lawsuit. Dolan initiate the proceedings for the sanctions against both of those lawyers as well as attorneys Jamie Alan Sasson and Michael Madaio.
In making his announcement of the fines, Middlebrooks wrote:
“These were political grievances masquerading as legal claims … This cannot be attributed to incompetent lawyering. It was a deliberate use of the judicial system to pursue a political agenda.”
Middlebrooks further said the lawsuit was a “200-page political manifesto [that] contained factual allegations that were either knowingly false or made in reckless disregard for the truth.”
Middlebrooks, who dismissed this suit in September, was ironically appointed by former President Bill Clinton, the husband of Hillary Clinton.
While most of the attorneys who are facing these fines haven’t commented yet, Habba told The New York Times that she planned to appeal the decision.
Following the announcement of the fine, George Doumar, who served as a lawyer for Dolan, said lawsuits like the one Trump filed undermine the U.S. legal system. He said:
“We gave Trump’s lawyers multiple warnings, and rather than serve as gatekeepers of the integrity of the court system, they doubled down on unsupported allegations.”
Trump’s legal team accused Dolan of being the one to start the rumor that Russian intelligence officials had possession of a blackmail tape that included Trump being with prostitutes. That was all part of the now-infamous Steele dossier that was unearthed during John Durham’s investigation into Russia possibly colluding with Trump.
In his defense, Dolan’s attorneys asked that he be removed from the lawsuit entirely. They claimed their client didn’t know anything about the rumor, didn’t conspire to create the dossier and had never served as the Democratic National Committee chairman, as Trump’s lawsuit claimed.
They further said Dolan’s only involvement with Clinton’s campaign for president in 2016 was serving as a volunteer.
Trump named 31 different organizations and people in his lawsuit as defendants. His lawyers have already appealed the decision that Middlebrooks handed down in September to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The lawsuit was originally filed back in March, alleging that the defendants committed a number of offenses against him, including racketeering conspiracy, computer fraud, theft of secret internet data and malicious prosecution.
