Judge Fines Donald Trump Nearly $1M for ‘Frivolous’ Lawsuit Against Hillary Clinton

A federal judge has fined Donald Trump and his attorneys nearly $1 million after the former president filed a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey and others — alleging them of conspiring against him during the 2016 election, by trying to link his campaign with Russia.

Trump’s suit, which was dismissed in September, had initially sought $70 million in damages, alleging that Clinton and others “sought to sway the public’s trust” by tying him to Russia.

Instead, Trump himself was fined — more than $65,000 in fees and penalties in November and now, after the defendants filed a new request for sanctions, nearly $1 million.

The New York Times reports that, in an order issued Thursday, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks wrote that Trump’s case “should never have been brought.”

“Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it,” Middlebrooks wrote in his order, per the Times. “Intended for a political purpose, none of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim.”

Elsewhere in the 46-page order, Middlebrooks said Trump was “using the courts as a stage set for political theater and grievance” and that the former president was “a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries.”

“Frivolous lawsuits should not be used as a vehicle for fundraising or fodder for rallies or social media,” the judge wrote, adding: “This behavior interferes with the ability of the judiciary to perform its constitutional duty.”

The nearly $1 million in fines will be divided among the slew of defendants who Trump had filed suit against, to cover legal fees. (All of the $171,631.06 awarded to Clinton, for instance, will go to covering her attorneys’ fees and legal research costs.)

Clinton attorney David Kendall told PEOPLE in a statement: “As the court has now recognized, from the beginning this law suit was a political stunt that had no business in a court of law. It was a sham which unfairly absorbed the court’s time and energy better devoted to litigants with real claims. And it caused 31 defendants to spend money and effort debunking the phony legal claims.”

Trump’s relationship to Russia has long been headline-generating, even leading to an investigation that ultimately “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Nonetheless, the report about the investigation documented “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign” and described their passively symbiotic relationship ahead of the 2016 presidential election in stark terms.

Trump himself has said that Russia “helped” get him elected — though he walked back that remark after tweeting it in 2019.

The former president announced in November that he will run for president again in 2024, even as many of his preferred candidates lost their elections in races called earlier that month around the country.

Trump’s early announcement comes amid investigations into his conduct on Jan. 6, 2021 — when a mob of rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on his behalf in an attempt to stop Joe Biden’s election victory from being certified — and his handling of classified documents after leaving office.