Trump Withdraws Lawsuit Against New York Attorney General Letitia James
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Former President Donald Trump has withdrawn his lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James just a day after he was ordered to pay nearly $1 million in sanctions for what a federal judge called a “frivolous” lawsuit against Hilary Clinton.
Trump “hereby voluntarily dismisses his claims in this action against Defendant, LETITIA JAMES, without prejudice,” a brief document filed Friday morning with U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks said.
Trump hit James with the lawsuit in November, accusing her of waging a “crusade” against him and his “great and upstanding businesses which have done nothing wrong.”
The lawsuit was in response to James’ civil suit against Trump and three of his children over an alleged years-long tax fraud scheme. James is seeking $250 million in restitution.
“Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and to cheat the system, thereby cheating all of us,” James said at a press conference in September.
Trump dropped his countersuit against James just one day after Middlebrooks ― who was also overseeing Trump’s lawsuit against James ― hit Trump and his attorney with a nearly $1 million sanction for what the judge said was a “pattern of abuse of the courts” for filing bogus lawsuits for political purposes against his former 2016 presidential rival, Clinton.
“Here, we are confronted with a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose,” Middlebrooks wrote in his decision.
In Thursday’s ruling, Middlebrooks warned Trump and his attorneys that they could face possible sanctions over their lawsuit against James. Trump withdrew his lawsuit the next day.
″[Trump] is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer,” Middlebrooks wrote, according to ABC News. “He knew full well the impact of his actions.”
