Trump Suffers Embarrassing Loss Over Hillary Clinton Lawsuit

It looks like Donald Trump and Alina Habba won’t be getting out of that pesky nearly $1 million fine for filing a particularly petty lawsuit against the president’s political foes.

In a 36-page ruling Wednesday, an Atlanta-based federal appeals court panel unanimously affirmed that Trump and his lawyer had committed “sanctionable conduct” in filing a “frivolous” lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey.

“Many of Trump’s and Habba’s legal arguments were indeed frivolous,” wrote Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge William Pryor Jr., meaning that the claims were fictitious and likely intended to harass, delay, or embarrass the defendants. Pryor was joined by Trump appointee Andrew Brasher and Biden appointee Embry Kidd.

Trump had sued Clinton, Comey, and others in 2022, accusing them of a racketeering conspiracy to invent false claims that his first presidential campaign had collaborated with Russia. A district court dismissed the case in January 2023 and jointly fined Habba and Trump $932,989.39.

Pryor referred to a district court’s previous findings that Trump had made a “malicious prosecution claim without a prosecution” and a “trade secret claim without a trade secret,” among others. “Trump and Habba give us no reason to reverse the district court’s ruling that these claims were frivolous,” he wrote.

The judge also wrote that the district court “did not clearly err” in determining that Trump had shown a “pattern of misusing the courts.”

Last week, a different federal appeals court panel affirmed the dismissal of Trump’s $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN for using the term “the Big Lie,” calling the president’s claims “unpersuasive” and “meritless.” In September, a federal judge dismissed the president’s $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, stating it was chock full of “tedious and burdensome” language that had nothing to do with the case itself.

The president’s ballroom obsession has put him at odds with the project’s architect, who doesn’t see eye to eye with him on the ballroom’s proposed size.

Donald Trump handpicked James McCrery II for the job. But several insiders that spoke with The Washington Post said that the two have not agreed on the scope of the project, with McCrery reportedly arguing that the 90,000-square-foot blueprint would overshadow the 55,000-square-foot White House mansion, violating basic architectural principles.

A White House official acknowledged that the pair has disagreed but would not provide specifics.

“As with any building, there is a conversation between the principal and the architect,” the unidentified official told the Post. “All parties are excited to execute on the president’s vision on what will be the greatest addition to the White House since the Oval Office.”

After promising Americans in July that his ballroom proposal would “be near but not touching” the White House East Wing, Trump completely razed the FDR-era extension in October, plowing forward without prerequisite approval from the National Capital Planning Commission or the express permission of Congress. Conveniently, Trump started demolition during the government shutdown, when the NCPC was consequently closed.

The Trump administration said that the forthcoming 90,000-square-foot event space will be capable of hosting 650 people, a 200-person bump from current maximum seating at the White House East Wing. But real estate experts have since pointed out that the possibilities of that square footage should be much broader, considering that a space of that size will be roughly equivalent to two football fields.

The project’s price tag also inexplicably grew by 50 percent after Trump began tearing down the East Wing. What Trump had originally pitched as a $200 million project was instead referred to in late October as a $300 million development plan. The White House suggested that the project would be funded, in part, by some of the country’s wealthiest families and biggest corporations, including the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta.

Some major players in the defense industry with massive federal contracts, including Lockheed Martin and Palantir, have also forked over significant cash to develop the ballroom, though it’s unclear what they might get out of a venue designed for dancing.

The White House’s partial destruction is, ultimately, another illustration that the country’s constitutional system of checks and balances has eroded. The international real estate mogul’s desire to destroy the government—and with it, the architectural face of American democracy—has received practically zero pushback from his allies in Congress, who appear all too willing to sit back as Trump courts billionaires to fund his golden banquet hall.

Administration officials close to the project told the Post that Trump has, at times, micromanaged his eponymously styled ballroom, spearheading frequent meetings about its design. Other reports indicate that he has become so fixated on his renovation project that he has literally wandered away from his presidential duties in order to admire its progress.

MAGA Republicans accused a Democrat running against Vivek Ramawamy for Ohio governor of posting an AI-generated video of the DOGE czar-for-a-day pitching a truly terrible policy idea. Too bad for them, because the video was actually real.

Former Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton, a Democratic primary candidate for governor in Ohio, shared a clip on X Monday that showed Ramaswamy pitching an outrageous idea to lower the cost of childcare.

“Make parenting more affordable by making school year-round and going to four o’clock instead of three o’clock, so you don’t have to pay for childcare,” Ramaswamy said in the video.

That proposal was so blatantly bad that Republicans immediately started to accuse Acton of sharing a fake video. Far-right commentator Tim Pool claimed on his show Tuesday that the video Acton shared was AI and that the audio had been “replaced.” He aired an edited version of the video pulled from Ramaswamy’s social media that appeared not to include the Republican’s proposal to extend school hours. “If we are playing this game, we are done,” Pool said, arguing that Ramaswamy ought to sue his opponent.

MAGA influencer Austin Padgett claimed in a post on X that the video was “probably the most successful example of a political deepfake I’ve seen so far.”

And Gabe Guidarini, chairman of the Ohio College Republicans Federation, also railed against candidates sharing manipulated videos. “If you’re a candidate and you share AI-altered videos of another candidate and pass it off as reality, you should be fined a lot of money,” Guidarini wrote on X.

But they couldn’t have been more wrong—as Acton noted in a reply to Guidarini. “Agreed. The bad news for Vivek Ramaswamy is that his plans for Ohio are so backwards, his own party is convinced they’re AI,” she wrote on X. “Spoiler alert: they’re not.”

It turns out, the only one manipulating the video was Ramaswamy. The full video was originally posted to Ramaswamy’s social media accounts before being removed. Another version of the video was later reposted without the Republican’s plan to extend school hours, according to The Columbus Dispatch.

Some MAGA accounts backed off their claims that Acton’s video was fake. “Never mind, this does not appear to be AI. It seems Vivek did post this, then reposted it with the year-round school part removed. However, he forgot to re-edit it on his Threads account (forgot that site existed),” America First Insights wrote on X. “Year round school is such ‘only GDP going up matters’ thinking.”

A Georgia judge has officially dismissed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) case against President Donald Trump and his allies for interfering in the 2020 election. 

The RICO charges—filed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in 2023—were connected to Trump’s alleged attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden. This is a significant victory for Trump and co., as this case was initially seen as a potential campaign killer for him. 

Prosecutor Peter Skandalakis—who replaced Willis on the case after she was removed by an appeals court for the “appearance of impropriety” caused by her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade—filed a motion to drop the case in order “to serve the interests of justice and promote judicial finality.”

A judge approved his motion Wednesday.

“Given the complexity of the legal issues at hand—ranging from constitutional questions and the Supremacy Clause to immunity, jurisdiction, venue, speedy-trial concerns, and access to federal records—and even assuming each of these issues were resolved in the State’s favor, bringing this case before a jury in 2029, 2030, or even 2031 would be nothing short of a remarkable feat,” Skandalakis wrote in his explanation for why he dropped the case. “The timeline of events outlined at the beginning of this report demonstrates just how difficult it is to move appellate issues through the courts with any degree of speed.” 

The original indictment had 13 criminal counts against Trump, and implicated many of his personal lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis, and Ray Smith. 

The case surrounded a 2021 phone call from Trump to  Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he pleaded with him to “find” 11,780 votes—the exact number needed to beat Biden in Georgia. The indictment also alleged that Powell paid a group of Trump supporters to access voting machines at the county’s election office to copy sensitive data and upload them to a site for election deniers as evidence of a rigged election. 

While Trump was certainly angered by the indictment, it never seemed to damage him politically, as he went on to win the presidency a second time. 

This story has been updated. 

House Democrats, led by Representative Jamie Raskin, are trying to force Republicans on the record against Ghislaine Maxwell.

Raskin introduced a resolution Wednesday “expressing the opposition of the House of Representatives to any grant of commutation, clemency, or pardon to federal convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, who refuses to take responsibility for her crimes.”

Maxwell was the accomplice of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Over the past month, the House Oversight Committee has released several damning emails from Epstein’s estate detailing his and Maxwell’s network of contacts, including President Trump. The president has not ruled out commuting Maxwell’s 20-year prison sentence or even pardoning her.

“Ghislaine Maxwell is the exact opposite of the kind of prisoner who deserves a pardon. She continues to lie about the crimes she committed and enabled, continues to disparage and denigrate the women who she victimized and continues to cover up for perhaps the worst global sex-trafficking conspiracy ever run out of the United States,” Raskin said in a statement.

“Every Member should support this Resolution to send a clear and unequivocal message in advance to President Donald Trump before he makes a mockery of the pardon power once again,” Raskin added. “America opposes the grant of any get-out-of-jail-free card to the unrepentant, unremorseful liar and criminal who was an indispensable actor in a vicious billion-dollar international child sex trafficking ring.”

Over the summer, Maxwell gave an interview to the Department of Justice claiming that she never saw Trump doing anything improper and that he wasn’t close to Epstein, which seems to be a lie. Shortly after that meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Maxwell was transferred to a minimum-security facility in Texas, where she has enjoyed a cushy life, getting perks such as secret meetings in the prison chapel, meal service in her cell, and unlimited toilet paper.

Last week, Maxwell said she wouldn’t cooperate with a House Oversight Committee probe into Epstein and how the DOJ handled his case. Trump still might pardon her anyway, but Raskin and other Democrats are hoping to make sure that GOP representatives are on the record first.