I Was Unaware Trump Is Suing The Clinton Mob Over Russiagate And The 2016 Election

CNN  |  Former President Donald Trump filed a sprawling federal lawsuit on Thursday against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and 26 other people and entities that he claims conspired to undermine his 2016 campaign by falsely tying him to Russia.

The lawsuit names a wide cast of characters that Trump has accused for years of orchestrating a "deep state" conspiracy against him -- including former FBI Director James Comey and other FBI officials, the retired British spy Christopher Steele and his associates, and a handful of Clinton campaign advisers.

 

"Under the guise of 'opposition research,' 'data analytics,' and other political stratagems, the Defendants nefariously sought to sway the public's trust," says the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Florida. "They worked together with a single, self-serving purpose: to vilify Donald J. Trump."

 

Over 108 pages, the lawsuit rails against many of Trump's political opponents and highlights the grievances that he has complained about for years. It claims Democrats and government officials perpetrated a grab bag of offenses, from a racketeering conspiracy to a malicious prosecution, computer fraud and theft of secret internet data. The lawsuit asks for more than $24 million in costs and damages.

The suit also contains some factual inaccuracies and some of the same grandiose or exaggerated false claims that Trump has made dozens of times. 

 

The civil suit alleges that Clinton and top Democrats hired lawyers and researchers to fabricate information tying Trump to Russia, and then peddled those lies to the media and to the US government, in hopes of hobbling his chances of winning in 2016. Trump claims they were assisted by "Clinton loyalists" at the FBI, who abused their powers to investigate him out of political animus.

 

John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton's 2016 campaign and one of the lawsuit's defendants, tweeted that part of the suit might be a "hoot."

 

"Do you think Trump filed this case with the hope of calling Vladimir Putin as a character witness? Trump deposition ought to be a hoot," Podesta wrote.

 

CNN has reached out to many of the defendants for comment. Some attorneys for defendants named in the lawsuit were still digesting it on Thursday.