Donald Trump on Thursday filed a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and a list of his favorite targets, alleging they tried to rig the 2016 US presidential election by linking his campaign to Russia.
Names include Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled a dossier of alleged ties between Trump and Russia, James Comey, the then FBI director who investigated possible ties, and the Democratic National Committee.
“In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton and her associates orchestrated an unthinkable conspiracy that shocks the conscience and is an affront to democracy in this country,” the complaint reads.
“Acting in concert, the defendants maliciously conspired to create a false story that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty.
“The actions taken to carry out their plan – falsifying evidence, defrauding law enforcement and exploiting access to highly sensitive data sources – are so outrageous, subversive and inflammatory that even the events of Watergate pale in comparison.”
Trump, who defeated Democratic nominee Clinton in the 2016 election, charges racketeering, theft of trade secrets, and “conspiracy to commit malicious lies” among other crimes.
The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount of punitive damages.
Trump’s lawsuit alleged that “the defendants maliciously conspired to create a false story that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, colluded with a hostile foreign sovereignty.”
A federal probe into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia has resulted in a string of convictions when it emerged that some of his associates lied about meetings with Russian officials.
And a 966-page report released by a Republican-led U.S. Senate committee in August 2020 detailed how Russia used Trump ally Paul Manafort and the WikiLeaks website to try to lead Trump to victory in the 2016 election.
But the episode has since been used by Trump to complain about being the victim of a witch hunt, leading to a group of villains who have fueled his rallies ever since.
Among the names is Jake Sullivan, who is now President Joe Biden’s national security adviser. As well as FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, whose text messages were intercepted by Trump and his supporter as evidence of a conspiracy, Clinton campaign manager in 2016 Robbie Mook, and Charles Dolan, a public relations consultant who was linked to the Steele dossier.
The 108-page complaint turns his rhetoric into a lawsuit. He accuses Clinton and her allies of trying to create and leak false reports of links between his campaign and Moscow.
Clinton lost the 2016 election to Trump, but the case claims that was only the beginning of efforts by her supporters to undermine him and his administration.
When these reports turned out to be false, Clinton’s allies went the other way.
“On a separate front, [indicted lawyer Michael] Sussman tasked information technology company Neustar with brazen hacking into servers from high-value locations, including Donald J. Trump’s private residence, Trump Tower, and, most shockingly, the White House, to expose sensitive data that could then be manipulated to give the impression that Trump was engaged in illegal business with the Russian bank Alfa-Bank, the complaint says.
These hacking allegations caused a storm in the conservative media earlier this year.
In a February lawsuit, John Durham, a special adviser appointed to investigate the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, alleged that the tech chief “used” access to White House data to find incriminating information about Trump.
The former president seized on the document to claim he was right when he said it was hacked during the 2016 election.
But fact-checkers were quick to point out that Trump was not in the White House at the time and that the data in question was often shared with third parties to track down scammers or unscrupulous individuals.
Still, the details provided the former president with ammunition for his rally and TV interview appearances, even as allies secretly tried to dissuade him from flaunting historical grievances.
The legal team that prepared the lawsuit included a new name in Trump’s team. Peter Tiktin, a litigator based an hour down the Florida coast from Mar-a-Lago, was Trump’s platoon sergeant when they both attended the New York Military Academy.
The case, filed Thursday, suggests a who’s who of grievances related to the 2016 election.
The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of Florida, alleges that the defendants’ efforts began in 2016 but continued after their defeat in an attempt to discredit the Trump administration.
“In short, the defendants, blinded by political ambition, orchestrated a malicious conspiracy to spread false and malicious information about Donald J. Trump and his campaign in the hope of ruining his life, his political career, and rigging the 2016 presidential election. in favor of Hillary Clinton,” the complaint reads.
“When their gambit failed and Donald J. Trump was elected, the efforts of the defendants continued unabated, simply turning their attention to undermining his presidential administration.”
Trump has faced a string of legal problems since leaving office.
A House committee is investigating the Jan. 6 violence when Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol last year.
His business is under scrutiny from both civil and criminal investigations in New York.