Donald Trump sued Hillary Clinton and other Democrats for trying to rig the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.
The suit covers a wide range of grievances that the Republican former president repeatedly raised during his four years in office after beating Clinton. It also comes as he continues falsely to claim that his defeat by Democratic President Joe Biden in 2020 was due to 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.
Among other claims, the suit includes “racketeering”, and “conspiracy for injurious falsehood.”
Plaintiffs are seeking punitive and compensatory damages. Trump claimed he was forced to incur expenses that will be determined at trial but are known to exceed twenty-four million dollars ($24,000,000). These expenses continue to accrue in the form of defense costs, legal fees, and other related expenses.
Trump is suing Christopher Steele, an ex-intelligence officer from Britain.
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 by a Republican-led U.S. Senate Committee in 2020 found that Russia used Republican political operative Paul Manafort as well as the WikiLeaks website, to help Trump win the 2016 elections.
Manafort spent five months working on Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016.
Russia’s alleged interference in elections, which Moscow denies, led to a two-year-long U.S. investigation by Robert Mueller, Special Counsel.
Mueller published an extensive report in 2019 that described many links between Russia and Trump’s campaign, but didn’t charge any Trump associates with criminal conspiracy.
Mueller stated in his report that Russia perceived a Trump presidency would be beneficial and worked to achieve that outcome. The campaign also believed it would reap electoral benefits from the Russian-obtained information.
