On Thursday, former President Donald Trump filed a massive federal lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, and 26 other people and companies, alleging that they plotted to sabotage his 2016 presidential campaign by falsely linking him to Russia.
Former FBI Director James Comey and other FBI officials, retired British spy Christopher Steele and his friends, and a handful of Clinton campaign aides are among the people named in the lawsuit, which Trump has accused of organizing a "deep state" plot against him for years.
"Under the pretense of 'opposition research,' 'data analytics,' and other political stratagems, the Defendants nefariously endeavored to manipulate the public's trust," the lawsuit claims. "They collaborated with a one, self-serving goal in mind: to demonize Donald Trump."
The complaint, which spans 108 pages, rants against several of Trump's political foes while also highlighting long-standing grievances. It says that Democrats and government officials committed a slew of crimes, ranging from racketeering to malicious prosecution, computer fraud, and the theft of secret internet data. In addition to expenses and damages, the complaint seeks more than $24 million.There are certain factual flaws in the suit, as well as some of the same grandiose or exaggerated false statements Trump has made dozens of times.
According to the legal claim, Clinton and other prominent Democrats engaged lawyers and researchers to invent evidence linking Trump to Russia, then marketed those lies to the media and the US government in order to sabotage his prospects of winning in 2016. They were aided, Trump argues, by "Clinton supporters" in the FBI, who abused their powers to pursue him because of political animosity.
Part of the case, according to John Podesta, the head of Clinton's 2016 campaign and one of the lawsuit's defendants, could be a "hoax."
"Do you believe Trump initiated this action in the hopes of getting Vladimir Putin to testify as a character witness? The Trump deposition should be hilarious "Podesta penned the piece.
Many of the defendants have been contacted by CNN for comment. On Thursday, some attorneys for the lawsuit's named defendants were still absorbing it.
"We haven't had a chance to read the complaint," said Aitan Goelman, who represents former FBI officer Peter Strzok. "But knowing the previous President, there's probably very nothing in there that's factual."The Clinton team paid researchers to dig up dirt on Trump and Russia, and well-connected Democrats sent some of their findings on to law enforcement, feeling that probable ties between Trump and Russia were worth looking into. However, the Justice Department's inspector general and a bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee have previously refuted many of Trump's far-reaching allegations in the complaint.
For the past three years, special counsel John Durham has been investigating a lot of the activity that Trump claims in his lawsuit. Durham hasn't gone quite so far as Trump claims.
Three of the individuals who were sued by Trump on Thursday have been charged with criminal offenses by Durham. Durham got a guilty plea from Kevin Clinesmith, a former low-level FBI lawyer who admitted to tampering with an email supporting a surveillance request against a former Trump campaign aide with ties to Russian spies.Durham also accused Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann of lying to the FBI about who he was representing at a discussion concerning Trump-Russia ties in the fall of 2016. Durham claims that as part of his work for Democrats, including Clinton, Sussmann was surreptitiously passing along Trump suspicions to the FBI. Durham also accused Igor Danchenko, Steele's key source of information for his infamous dossier, of lying to the FBI in 2017 about his dossier contacts. Sussmann and Danchenko are both denying the allegations.
According to Trump's lawsuit, Clinton and the other defendants colluded to have the FBI open a "unfounded investigation" into possible Trump-Russia cooperation in the 2016 election. Multiple federal judges upheld the constitutionality of the inquiry, which was eventually taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller and revealed scores of links between Trump associates and Russian officials.The report found that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win by hacking and leaking material on Clinton and running a sophisticated disinformation campaign targeting US voters on social media. The investigation also discovered that Trump's campaign attempted to profit from Russia's meddling, though it found no evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Trump associates and Russians.
On Thursday, some legal experts slammed Trump's lawsuit, describing it as a pointless political exercise.
Carter Page, a former Trump presidential campaign adviser, sued several of the same people Trump named as defendants on Thursday, but his claim is more narrowly focused on his privacy rights being violated when he was being surveilled by the FBI in the Russia probe.
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