Former US President Donald Trump was fined $938,000 for a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton.
Trump shows an “enduring pattern of abuse of the courts” and filed the lawsuit “to dishonestly promote a political narrative,” Judge John Middlebrooks said yesterday.
In the lawsuit, which Middlebrooks rejected last year, Trump accused Clinton of attempting to rig the 2016 presidential election. He accused his then-rival of wanting to convince the public that he had cooperated with Russia in his election campaign and demanded $70 million. in damage. Clinton lost to Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
The lawsuit “should never have been filed,” Middlebrooks said in the court order. Its unsuitability as a remedy was evident from the outset, and “no sane attorney would have brought it,” the judge wrote. Trump is “a sophisticated litigator who repeatedly uses the courts to exact revenge on political opponents”.
Rape victim mistaken for ex-wife
Trump also made an embarrassing mistake by questioning columnist E. Jean Carroll about the rape allegations. When Trump saw a photo from the 1990s, he mistook the photo of Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples, according to a court document.
In Trump’s own words, Carroll is not his “type”. “This is Marla, yes. This is my wife,” Trump said, according to a transcript released of interviews by Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan last October. Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, immediately intervened: “No, it’s Carroll.”
Trump was married to actress Maples from 1993 to 1999. Trump’s daughter Tiffany is from this marriage. Carroll, now 79, publicly accused then-President Trump in 2019 of raping her in a dressing room at upscale New York department store Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s.