Towards the end of his presidency, Donald Trump sued The New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN for running stories alleging that his 2016 campaign "colluded" with Russia. As of this Friday, all those cases have been dismissed.
In an op-ed for Above the Law, Liz Dye writes that the last case to be dismissed on Friday, which was Trump's suit against The Post, "was right out of the Trump litigation 'playbook' of political speeches masquerading as civil litigation memorably called out by Judge Donald Middlebrooks when he benchslapped the former president and his lawyers with a million dollars in sanctions last month."
Middlebrooks sanctioned Trump and his lawyers nearly $1 million for a "frivolous" lawsuit claiming Hillary Clinton had tried to rig the 2016 election.
The judge said the Republican, who is seeking to return to the White House in 2024, exhibited a "continuing pattern of misuse of the courts" and had filed the suit "in order to dishonestly advance a political narrative."
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The lawsuit, which Middlebrooks tossed out last year, claimed that Clinton, who lost the 2016 presidential election to Trump, and others had created a false narrative that his campaign had colluded with Russia.
Trump had sought $70 million in damages.
But the suit "should never have been brought," Middlebrooks said in the 45-page written court order.
As Dye points out, in the latest ruling, the court was unconvinced by Trump's argument that attacked the alleged liberal ideology of Washington Post reporters, saying that he just presented examples that were "were protected expressions of opinion" and not "actual malice."
According to Dye, Trump's suits never had any merit and were "never defamation suits in anything but name."
"In the meantime, Trump has moved on to crazier lawsuits and weirder lawyers. He’s currently suing CNN in Florida for saying that he lied about election fraud," Dye writes. "Even if his claims about rampant fraud were false, he actually believed them, and so he’s entitled to $475 million in damages — or so he’d have his appointee Judge Raag Singhal believe, anyway. He’s also filed suit against the Pulitzer board in Okeechobee County Florida for defamatory refusal to revoke prizes awarded in 2019 to the Post and the Times."
With additional reporting by AFP
