Trump asks Supreme Court to revive his 2016 election lawsuit against Hillary Clinton

Craig Hudson/Bloomberg/Getty Images

President Donald Trump urged the Supreme Court on Friday to wade into his years long legal battle with former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and ex-Justice Department officials over the 2016 election, appealing a case that a lower court concluded was “frivolous.”

Trump filed the lawsuit in 2022 against Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and dozens of other people and entities he said conspired to undermine his 2016 campaign by falsely tying him to Russia.

A federal district court dismissed the suit and ultimately ruled that Trump’s attorneys were liable for nearly $1 million in sanctions. The Atlanta-based 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld that decision last year.

“This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start,” wrote US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks of the Southern District of Florida, who was nominated to the bench by former President Bill Clinton. “No reasonable lawyer would have filed it.”

Trump’s case was dismissed in part because, the district court said, his civil racketeering claims were filed too late. In his appeal to the Supreme Court, the president argues that he made a decision to wait until he was out of office. The appeal raises a question of whether a president’s responsibilities warrant holding off on certain legal deadlines while he is in office.

“Faced with this conspiracy during his term, President Trump concluded that any private civil lawsuit would consume substantial time and energy and that any civil suit should therefore be postponed until after his term,” the president’s attorneys told the Supreme Court, according to a copy of the appeal reviewed by CNN.

The district court “erroneously rejected the president’s theory,” Trump’s attorneys argued, “improperly treated its advocacy as evidence of nonexistent ‘bad faith,’ and relied on it to mistakenly impose sanctions.”

The Supreme Court will likely decide later this year whether to hear the case.

Craig Hudson/Bloomberg/Getty Images

周五，唐纳德·特朗普总统敦促最高法院介入他与前民主党总统候选人希拉里·克林顿和前司法部官员之间长达数年的法律斗争，这场斗争与 2016 年大选有关。此前，下级法院裁定此案“毫无根据”。

2022年，特朗普对希拉里·克林顿、民主党全国委员会以及其他数十名个人和实体提起诉讼，称他们合谋通过捏造事实将他与俄罗斯联系起来，破坏了他2016年的竞选活动。

联邦地区法院驳回了此案，并最终裁定特朗普的律师需支付近100万美元的制裁金。位于亚特兰大的美国第十一巡回上诉法院去年基本维持了这一裁决。

“这起案件根本就不应该提起。从一开始，它作为一项法律诉讼的不足之处就显而易见，”美国佛罗里达州南区地方法院法官唐纳德·米德尔布鲁克斯写道。米德尔布鲁克斯法官由前总统比尔·克林顿提名。“任何理智的律师都不会提起这样的诉讼。”

特朗普的案件被驳回的部分原因是，地区法院认为他提出的民事敲诈勒索指控提交时间过晚。在向最高法院提起的上诉中，总统辩称他决定等到卸任后再提起诉讼。该上诉引发了一个问题：总统在任期间的职责是否允许他推迟履行某些法律期限？

据 CNN 审阅的一份上诉文件副本显示，特朗普总统的律师告诉最高法院：“面对任期内的这一阴谋，特朗普总统认为任何私人民事诉讼都会耗费大量时间和精力，因此任何民事诉讼都应该推迟到他任期结束后进行。”

特朗普的律师辩称，地方法院“错误地驳回了总统的理论”，“不恰当地将总统的主张视为根本不存在的‘恶意’的证据，并据此错误地实施了制裁”。

最高法院很可能在今年晚些时候决定是否受理此案。