Trump drops lawsuit against Recent York Attorney General James

Former President Donald Trump on Friday morning voluntarily dropped a longshot federal lawsuit in Florida against Recent York’s attorney general — a day after the identical judge within the case sanctioned him and his lawyer nearly $1 million for filing one other, “frivolous” lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and plenty of other defendants.

The judge, John Middlebrooks, had pointedly noted in a scathing sanction order Thursday evening within the Clinton case that he was also handling Trump’s criticism against Attorney General Letitia James in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Trump’s suit against James — which Middlebrooks last month warned appeared “vexatious and frivolous” — was filed in response to her office’s civil lawsuit against Trump in Recent York state court alleging fraud at his company.

James’ spokeswoman, Delaney Kempner, noted that Trump’s dismissal of his lawsuit got here on the identical day that his “reply to our motion to dismiss this case was due.” It also got here two days after Middlebrooks scheduled a jury trial of the suit to start out in mid-July.

A lawyer for Trump didn’t immediately reply to a matter about why the lawsuit against James was voluntarily dismissed.

Within the Clinton case, Middlebrooks ordered Trump, who’s searching for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, and his lawyer Alina Habba to pay Clinton and other defendants around $938,000 for filing the suit, which the judge previously dismissed.

Trump’s suit accused Clinton and the others, including the Democratic National Committee and various FBI officials, of conspiring to create a false narrative through the 2016 presidential election that his campaign was colluding with Russia.

“We’re confronted with a lawsuit that ought to never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, each factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose,” Middlebrooks wrote in his order dunning Trump and Habba with monetary sanctions.

Middlebrooks’ order cited how Trump has responded in court in Recent York to James’ yearslong civil investigation of his company, the Trump Organization, as one in all the multiple examples of “a pattern of abuse of the courts” by the Republican former president.

“Mr. Trump is a prolific and complex litigant who’s repeatedly using the courts to hunt revenge on political adversaries,” the judge wrote.

“He’s the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he can’t be seen as a litigant blindly following the recommendation of a lawyer.”

James in September filed suit in Manhattan Supreme Court against Trump, his company, three of his adult children, and others, alleging widespread fraud involving false financial statements related to the corporate’s business.

In November, Trump sued James in Florida state court, alleging she was engaged in a “war of intimidation and harassment” against him. That suit sought to dam James from getting records from a revocable trust he arrange in Florida that has ownership of the Trump Organization.

James shortly thereafter removed that lawsuit to federal court in Florida, where Middlebrooks was assigned the case.

Middlebrooks in his order within the Clinton case Thursday noted that last month he had ruled that Trump’s “try and sidestep rulings by the Recent York court by suing AG James individually somewhat than in her official capability was plainly frivolous.”

The judge also had found that Trump had “no likelihood of success on the merits” of the case, and that he had urged Trump to think about dropping his opposition to James’ bid to get the case.

“This litigation [against James] has all of the telltale signs of being each vexatious and frivolous,” Middlebrooks had written last month.

However the judge later wrote, “a call in Mr. Trump’s Florida lawsuit against the Recent York Attorney General, a case now pending before me, is premature.”