# Trump v. Clinton **Trump v. Clinton**, No. 2:22-cv-14102 (S.D. Fla.), is the civil suit [[Donald Trump]] filed on March 24, 2022 against [[Hillary Clinton]], the Democratic National Committee and more than two dozen other defendants, alleging a racketeering conspiracy to tie his 2016 campaign to Russia. It was dismissed in full, produced the largest litigation-conduct sanction ever imposed on a U.S. president, was affirmed on appeal, and on **October 9, 2026** became a Supreme Court petition. The case is the clearest single artifact of [[Lawfare]] run in the other direction: not a prosecution of Trump, but Trump's own use of a court as a press release — and a federal judge saying so on the record, with a number attached. ## The complaint Filed in the Southern District of Florida and invoking the [[RICO Act]], the amended complaint alleged "a coordinated scheme ... to undermine his candidacy and Presidency through fabricated accusations of Russian collusion." Named defendants included [[Hillary Clinton]], the Democratic National Committee, DNC Services Corporation, HFACC, Inc., [[Perkins Coie]], [[Fusion GPS]], [[Glenn Simpson]], [[Marc Elias]], [[Michael Sussmann]], [[Igor Danchenko]], [[John Podesta]], [[Debbie Wasserman Schultz]], and [[Orbis Business Intelligence]] — the firm of [[Christopher Steele]], author of the [[Steele Dossier]]. ## Dismissal — September 8, 2022 Judge [[Donald Middlebrooks]] dismissed the amended complaint in its entirety. The RICO claims were held time-barred and, in the alternative, meritless; claims against the United States were dismissed without prejudice for failure to exhaust under the Federal Tort Claims Act; several individual defendants were dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction. The order found that "the claims presented in the Amended Complaint are not warranted under existing law," observed that the pleading "is neither short nor plain," and noted that what it "lacks in substance and legal support it seeks to substitute with length, hyperbole." ## Sanctions — January 19, 2023 Middlebrooks imposed **$937,989.39** in fees and costs on Trump, his lead attorney [[Alina Habba]], and Habba Madaio & Associates, jointly and severally, under the court's inherent authority — reduced from the $1,058,283.50 the defendants had requested. A separate Rule 11 order penalized Trump's attorneys $50,000 plus $16,274.23 in one defendant's fees. > [!quote] "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." > — Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks, sanctions order, January 19, 2023 The order also found that "Mr. Trump's deliberate use of a frivolous lawsuit for an improper purpose constitutes bad faith" and called him "the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process." ## Eleventh Circuit — November 26, 2025 A panel of Chief Judge William Pryor and Circuit Judges Brasher and Kidd, consolidating four appeals, **affirmed** the dismissal with prejudice as to all defendants but one, and **affirmed both sanctions orders**, holding that Trump and his attorneys "committed sanctionable conduct and forfeited their procedural objections." Pryor's opinion described the surviving claims as "untimely and otherwise meritless." The single caveat: as to [[Orbis Business Intelligence]], the court vacated the dismissal with prejudice and remanded with instructions to dismiss **without** prejudice, because the district court lacked personal jurisdiction over the firm. The full court later denied rehearing. Motions for additional appellate sanctions under Rule 38 were denied. ## Supreme Court petition — October 9, 2026 Trump, represented by Richard Klugh, petitioned the Supreme Court to vacate the Eleventh Circuit's ruling. The questions presented are narrow and self-interested in a structurally novel way: 1. whether the filing deadline should have been extended on account of his being president, and 2. whether a court may sanction a sitting president and his lawyers for advancing a "substantial, unresolved argument" on that point. Klugh argued the ruling "wrongly forces Presidents to choose between their public responsibilities and private claims" and that it "violate[s] this Court's precedents and undermine[s] the adversary system by improperly sanctioning lawyers and their clients for reasonable constitutional advocacy." Clinton's response is due 30 days after docketing; the Court is expected to act on the petition in the winter of 2026–2027. ## Why this matters The petition converts a lost vanity suit into a claim of office-based immunity from litigation discipline. [[Trump v. United States]] established substantial criminal immunity for official acts; this petition asks whether the president's *private* civil litigation gets a procedural dispensation too, and whether the Rule 11 and inherent-authority machinery that disciplines every other litigant applies to him at all. It is the civil-procedure wing of [[Elite Impunity]]. It also sits inside the [[Trump Retribution Doctrine]] thread as its earliest fully adjudicated instance. The suit's target list is the 2016 Russia-investigation cast; its legal theory was that the investigation itself was the conspiracy. Both the dismissal and the sanctions order were, in effect, judicial findings that the grievance is not a cause of action — findings Trump is now asking the Supreme Court to erase. ## See Also - [[Donald Middlebrooks]] - [[Alina Habba]] - [[Steele Dossier]] - [[Mueller Report]] - [[Lawfare]] - [[Elite Impunity]] - [[Trump Retribution Doctrine]]