Newsdeck

LAWSUIT

Donald Trump sues Hillary Clinton, other Democrats over 2016 Russian collusion allegations

Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump during the second Presidential Debate at Washington University in St Louis.

Donald Trump on Thursday sued his rival in the 2016 US presidential election, Hillary Clinton, and several other Democrats, alleging that they tried to rig that election by tying his campaign to Russia.

The lawsuit covers a long list of grievances the Republican former president repeatedly aired during his four years in the White House after beating Clinton, and comes as he continues to falsely claim that his 2020 election defeat by Democratic President Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud.

“Acting in concert, the Defendants maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty,” the former president alleged in a 108-page lawsuit filed in a federal court in Florida.

The suit alleges “racketeering” and a “conspiracy to commit injurious falsehood,” among other claims.

A Clinton representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages. Trump said 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.”

The defendants in Trump’s lawsuit include Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer.

A dossier written by Steele, which was circulated to the FBI and media outlets before the November 2016 election, set out unproven assertions that Russia had embarrassing information about Trump and some of his Republican campaign’s advisers and that Moscow was working behind the scenes to defeat Clinton.

A 966-page report issued by a Republican-led U.S. Senate committee in 2020 concluded that Russia used Republican political operative Paul Manafort and the WikiLeaks website to try to help Trump win the 2016 election.

Manafort worked on Trump’s presidential campaign for five months in 2016.

Russia’s alleged election interference, which Moscow denies, sparked a two-year-long U.S. investigation headed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

In 2019, Mueller released an exhaustive report that detailed numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign but did not charge any Trump associate with a criminal conspiracy.

Mueller said in his report that “the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe in Washington and Jonathan Stempel in New York. Editing by Scott Malone, Chris Reese and Leslie Adler.)

Gallery

Comments - Please in order to comment.

  • Ian matthews says:

    Come folks, U can do better than this. As much as Trump is an unlikeable person you still have to accurately report the matter

Please peer review 3 community comments before your comment can be posted

MavericKids vol 3

How can a child learn to read if they don't have a book?

81% of South African children aged 10 can't read for meaning. You can help by pre-ordering a copy of MavericKids.

For every copy sold we will donate a copy to Gift of The Givers for children in need of reading support.

A South African Hero: You

There’s a 99.8% chance that this isn’t for you. Only 0.2% of our readers have responded to this call for action.

Those 0.2% of our readers are our hidden heroes, who are fuelling our work and impacting the lives of every South African in doing so. They’re the people who contribute to keep Daily Maverick free for all, including you.

The equation is quite simple: the more members we have, the more reporting and investigations we can do, and the greater the impact on the country.

Be part of that 0.2%. Be a Maverick. Be a Maverick Insider.

Support Daily Maverick→
Payment options