Clinton says Trump’s lawsuit has ‘no merit,’ should be dismissed

Attorneys for Hillary Clinton on Wednesday asked a court to dismiss former President Trump’s unusual lawsuit alleging a widespread Democratic conspiracy to undermine his 2016 campaign with accusations of Russian collusion.

In a court filing, the former secretary of state’s lawyers said Trump’s complaint is unworthy of serious consideration by a federal court, raising a series of procedural and legal challenges to his case.

“Whatever the utility of Plaintiff’s Complaint as a fundraising tool, a press release, or a list of political grievances, it has no merit as a lawsuit, and should be dismissed with prejudice,” reads the filing’s one-sentence introduction.

Clinton’s legal team argued that Trump’s lawsuit should be thrown out because the statute of limitations for his allegations has expired.

They also said that the complaint lacks any factual basis for a legal claim. According to the legal filing, the “only factually supported allegations concerning Clinton in the lengthy Complaint” are the dates on which she declared her candidacy and won the Democratic presidential nomination and the public statements she made about purported ties between Trump and Russia.

Trump filed his wide-ranging lawsuit in federal district court in Florida last month against Clinton and 28 other individuals and organizations that he said orchestrated a scheme to float false allegations about his links to the Kremlin.

“Acting in concert, the Defendants maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty,” the 108-page complaint reads.

“The actions taken in furtherance of their scheme — falsifying evidence, deceiving law enforcement, and exploiting access to highly-sensitive data sources — are so outrageous, subversive and incendiary that even the events of Watergate pale in comparison.”

Among the various defendants in the case are former Clinton foreign policy adviser and current national security adviser Jake Sullivan, the Democratic National Committee, former FBI Director James Comey and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks rejected Trump’s request that he recuse himself from the case because he was appointed by former President Bill Clinton. Middlebrooks said in his decision that the request has no basis in law and that the president who nominated him to the bench has no bearing on his ability to judge cases impartially. 

“I have considered whether the nature of this lawsuit—acutely politically charged as it is—might provide some additional cause to question my qualification to preside, but I see no impediment there either,” the judge wrote.

“Every federal judge is appointed by a president who is affiliated with a major political party, and therefore every federal judge could theoretically be viewed as beholden, to some extent or another. As judges, we must all transcend politics.”