After a judge determined that a lawsuit brought against Hillary Clinton and other defendants was ‘meritless’, President Trump requested on Tuesday that nearly $1 million in sanctions against him and his attorneys be dropped.
Trump’s attorneys argued in a filing with the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that a federal judge’s order to dismiss a lawsuit in 2022 and to impose further sanctions on Trump and his attorneys was unjustified. Additionally, they contend that the sanctions “violated due process and was an abuse of discretion.”
“The district court made a clear error and abused its discretion in finding that Appellants acted in bad faith, and in imposing almost $1 million in inherent authority sanctions,” Trump’s lawyers said in the appeal.
In a January 2023 order, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks, an appointee of former president Clinton, sanctioned Trump and his legal team with more than $900,000 for what he characterized as a “continuing pattern” of court misconduct.
“This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it. Intended for a political purpose, none of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim,” Judge Middlebrooks stated last year upon imposing the sanctions.
