Donald Trump and his lawyers received the most brutal smackdown that a judge could deliver to them last week when he sanctioned them all and ordered Trump to pay more than $170,000 to Hillary Clinton for her legal fees. Trump had sued Clinton and 32 other people for tying him to Russia during the 2016 Presidential campaign, and the lawsuit was dismissed months ago. But the dismissal wasn't enough, and the judge is forcing Trump and his lawyers to pay up for clogging the courts with frivolous lawsuits. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what happened.
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Late last week, a federal judge here in the state of Florida, judged by the name of Donald Middlebrooks, issued a ruling that Donald Trump and his lawyers had to pay close to 1 million to a group of defendants of a lawsuit that Middlebrooks had actually thrown out last September. Those defendants include people like Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, Lisa Page, Peter Struck, and a whole host of other democratic staffers who Trump had unsuccessfully sued, arguing that their talking points about his connections to Russia or Russia trying to help him in 2016 were in fact somehow defamation. So, as I said, the judge dismissed that case back in September, but he wasn't done with him. No. Judge Middlebrooks decided you had to pay what you've done here. And this is what he said in the, in the ruling this past week. You've clogged up the court system. You filed this frivolous lawsuit. He said, quote, this case should never have been brought. It's inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would've filed it. It was intended for a political purpose. None of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim. He then said that all of the parties were needlessly harmed in order to dishonesty, advance a political narrative, and that Donald Trump had a pattern of misuse of the courts. So, as I said, nearly $1 million in legal fees that Donald Trump and his lawyers now have to pay to people. But the big one, the one that sticks out, the one that's gonna hurt Trump the most, just right here, is the $171,631 that he has to hand over to Hillary Clinton herself. So Donald J. Trump, the man who defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, thanks to the electoral college, even though she got millions more votes now has to write her a check for $171,631. Now, I know that's no compensation for Hillary for losing to the guy, but I gotta imagine there's part of her that's gonna absolutely love that. Now, I am curious to know whether or not Trump is going to have to personally write out the check himself, or if, you know, they're just gonna have to wire transfer the money, whatever it is. Uh, but it's, it's going to be humiliating for him. This is the individual that he appears to hate more than anybody else on the planet. Like, I just hate Hillary Clinton so much is the way Donald Trump is. And now you have to give the person you hate the most, The thing you love the most, which is your money. And it all happened because you filed this lawsuit that you should never have filed to begin with, that had no chance of winning from the start. So you look like an idiot back when it got dismissed. You look like an idiot when you got sanctioned. Now you're gonna look like an idiot again when you have to hand her that check. And I think Hillary Clinton and her lawyer should have gone and argued that Trump should have to hand-deliver this. The check himself like that is absolutely something the courts could have done. That would've been awesome. And I would love, I would have loved for Hillary Clinton to film the whole thing, right?
