President Donald Trump might have come up with a new way to add to his already sizeable campaign war chest: On March 24 he filed a $24 million federal lawsuit alleging that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee launched an “unthinkable plot” in 2016 to falsely accuse him and his campaign as “colluding with Russia.”
Filed in the Southern District of Florida, the suit claims Clinton and her party fabricated a scandal in an effort to “cripple” Trump’s bid for the presidency six years ago, The New York Post reports.
It did not succeed, of course, and Clinton suffered a humiliating defeat. Still, Trump claims that he was “forced to incur expenses in an amount to be determined at trial, but known to be in excess of twenty-four million dollars ($24,000,000) and continuing to accrue, in the form of defense costs, legal fees, and related expenses.” Trump is seeking both compensatory and punitive damages.
The 45th president alleges that the Clinton/Democratic conspiracy falsified evidence, lied to law enforcement, and abused its “access to highly-sensitive data sources” — and was “so outrageous, subversive and incendiary that even the events of Watergate pale in comparison.”
The suit also mentions the Christopher Steele dossier, a package of false information intended to damage Trump, as a way that Clinton and the Democrats sought to “sway the public’s trust,” according to the suit.
“They worked together with a single, self-serving purpose: to vilify Donald J. Trump. Indeed, their far-reaching conspiracy was designed to cripple Trump’s bid for presidency by fabricating a scandal that would be used to trigger an unfounded federal investigation and ignite a media frenzy,” claims the suit.
The plot was “conceived, coordinated and carried out by top-level officials at the Clinton Campaign and the DNC — including ‘the candidate’ herself — who attempted to shield her involvement behind a wall of third parties,” says the suit. When the plot failed and Trump was elected, the Democrats had to shift tactics and try other ways to ruin the credibility of the Trump administration, the filing says. This led to non-stop phony scandals, costly investigations and ceaseless news coverage of allegations that always proved to have no merit.
The complaint also alleges that the Democrats violated the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, among other offenses.
