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Trump Lawyers Sanctioned for Frivolous Lawsuit Against Political Opponents
Sloppy legal filings against Democratic political operatives may end up costing some of Trump's lawyers.
A federal district court judge in Florida has imposed sancitons on several attorneys who represented Donald Trump in a sprawling lawsuit alleging various Democratic operatives conspired to spread false information about him. The ruling is here and the NYT's Charlie Savage reports on the decision here.
From the decision:
Rule 11 sanctions are properly assessed (1) when a party files a pleading that has no reasonable factual basis; (2) when the party files a pleading that is based on a legal theory that has no reasonable chance of success and that cannot be advanced as a reasonable argument to change existing law; or (3) when the party files a pleading in bad faith for an improper purpose. . . . Here, all three are true. . . .
As the opinion notes, Trump's attorneys had problems with the facts:
The pleadings in this case contained factual allegations that were either knowingly false or made in reckless disregard for the truth. The following examples are indicative. When suing someone it helps to know where they live, as this can have subject matter or personal jurisdiction significance. In this case for instance, Mr. Dolan argued that he engaged in no activities in Florida that made him susceptible to suit here. He filed an affidavit stating under oath that he lived in Virginia. His lawyers advised Mr. Trump's lawyers of that. Moreover, the summons in this case indicated an Arlington, Virginia address (DE 27) and the return of service indicated he was served there (DE 27-1). Yet the Amended Complaint alleged that Mr. Dolan was a resident of New York. The Trump lawyers' answer:
[I]t must be noted that Charles Dolan is an incredibly common name, and Plaintiff's counsel's traditional search methods identified countless individuals with said name across the country, many of whom reside in New York.
(DE 270 at 10). While alone not of great significance, this response reflects the cavalier attitude towards facts demonstrated throughout the case. . . .
Mr. Trump's lawyers claim "nearly all" of the allegations against Mr. Dolan were sourced directly from the Indictment brought against Igor Danchenko by special counsel John Durham. (DE 270-2 at 6). But this is simply not so. As was the practice throughout the Amended Complaint, Plaintiff cherry-picked portions which supported his narrative while ignoring those that undermined or contradicted it. Mr. Trump's lawyers persisted in this misrepresentation after being warned by the sanctions motion, and they doubled down on this falsehood in their response to the motion. . . .
I find that Mr. Trump's lawyers were warned about the lack of foundation for their factual contentions, turned a blind eye towards information in their possession, and misrepresented the Danchenko Indictment they claim as their primary support. The lawyers failed to conduct a pre-filing inquiry into the allegations against Mr. Dolan and have continued to advance Plaintiff's false claims based upon nothing but conjecture, speculation, and guesswork. This is precisely the conduct Rule 11 is intended to deter. . . .
Trump's lawyers also had problems with their legal theories:
Rule 11 sanctions are also warranted when a plaintiff's legal theories have no reasonable chance of success and cannot be advanced as a reasonable argument to change existing law. Massengale, 267 F.3d at 1301. Plaintiff's Amended Complaint is 193 pages in length, with 819 numbered paragraphs, 14 counts, and it names 31 defendants including Charles Dolan. As I stated in my Order entered September 8, 2022 (DE 267), none of these counts stated a claim upon which relief could be granted. Additionally, several of the defendants were not subject to personal jurisdiction, and there was not subject matter jurisdiction over the Federal Defendants. The Amended Complaint was, in its entirety, frivolous. Multiple substantive defects precluded Plaintiff from proceeding on any of the theories he advanced. . . .
And, the judge concluded, all this (and more) was reason to conclude the filings were made with an improper purpose
Not just initiated by a shotgun pleading, this was a shotgun lawsuit. Thirty-one individuals and organizations were summoned to court, forced to hire lawyers to defend against frivolous claims. The only common thread against them was Mr. Trump's animus.
Plaintiff deliberately misrepresented public documents by selectively using some portions while omitting other information including findings and conclusions that contradicted his narrative. This occurred with the Danchenko Indictment, the Department of Justice Inspector General's Report for Operation Hurricane, and the Mueller Report. It was too frequent to be accidental.
Every claim was frivolous, most barred by settled, well-established existing law. These were political grievances masquerading as legal claims. This cannot be attributed to incompetent lawyering. It was a deliberate use of the judicial system to pursue a political agenda.
The judge ordered the attorneys to pay $50,000 in sanctions and an addition $16,000 to cover one of the defendant's legal fees. At least one of the attorneys told the NYT she plans to appeal. Additional sanctions motions filed by other defendants from Trump's suit remain pending.
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Donald Trump — the tar-baby client.
at this pace, DOJ won’t have to indict Trump!
What does this have to do with indicting or not indicting Trump? Explain yourself.
You left out the part at the end where the judge concluded:
“I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your souls.”
We saw some familiar faces at the inception of the Trump election litigation wave. But nearly all of those experienced, able election lawyers left (withdrew appearances, or refrained from entering appearances) quickly, leaving the litigating to a shambling collection of misfits — Trump Election Litigation: Elite Strike Force — with predictable results.
Their betters wiped the floor with them. And in some cases Trump’s lawyers will literally pay for their inferiority. Then we will get to laugh at them when they ask Trump to reimburse them.
As the old saying goes, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
No self respecting monkey would have filed these lawsuits.
Do monkeys eat peanuts? I never thought about it, except perhaps in the context of fleabit peanut monkeys . . .
Here’s more for Charlie fans.
And BTW, I don’t think it is permitted to ask the client to pay for sanctions of this kind. This was deliberate misleading of the Court. That’s like having insurance for punitive damages, it violates public policy.
That seems an interesting issue.
Would your position on “asking the client to pay” change if the lawyers expressly told the client “um, we think this is a loser” and the client replied with “I don’t care, file it anyways”?
I mean, for my own practice that’s about when I start thinking about how to ditch the client. I don’t necessarily disagree that both the lawyers and client should get punished in such circumstances.
But I think we can all make a pretty good guess about whose pettiness is driving this litigation bus. If that’s what the client ordered, sanctions for the client seem appropriate as well.
What if your client directs you to destroy evidence? Or intimidate witnesses? Murder them? It’s up to the lawyers to say ‘that’s illegal, we can’t do it’.
Client instructions are not a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Lawyers represent clients, they are not slaves to the client. The first responsibility of the lawyer is to the court. Go read Rule 11b and you will understand.
When a lawyer gets sanctioned, he cannot simply turn around and bill his client (besides, Trump is not known to be generous with his money – what little he actually has).
More good news to add to :
1. The Russians retreating from Kherson
2. The Republicans blowing what should have an easy midterm
3. The Democrats retaining the Senate (check out those Nevada trends)
4. Almost clearing my work backlog.
If my college team wasn’t having its worst season in living memory, life would be sweet.
Don’t forget Elmo burning down Twitter.
Well, that’s ultimately probably bad news, but it sure is entertaining to watch him step on every rake he can find while begging people to scatter more around.
“3. The Democrats retaining the Senate (check out those Nevada trends)”
It’s not easy for a dog sitting on the couch watching Fox News and reading the WSJ to figure, but, best as I can tell, Nevada has about 90000 to 95000 votes outstanding. About 50k are in Clark county (Las Vegas) and 20 k in Washoe (Reno). That leaves about 20k – 25k in the rest of the state which is pretty red, as I understand. So, Masto has to pick up about 9000 votes and it’s not clear to me that she can do that if the less populated counties go bigly (or maybe biglier) for the Lax man. I suspect that the red counties are slow-walking their counts to see how many R votes they need to get over the line. In any event, from an outsider’s perspective it looks way to early to be counting chickens.
StellaLink_the dog : “I suspect that the red counties are slow-walking their counts to see how many R votes they need to get over the line”
That certainly sounds like an outsider’s perspective. That said, I am being optimistic, perhaps overly so. In my defense, the last thing I read on 538 (part of their running commentary) said a Masto win was likely. For the good of the country, we all hope so, right?
“That certainly sounds like an outsider’s perspective.”
Then I failed. It was supposed to sound like a joke.
“For the good of the country, we all hope so, right?”
It would be nice to not have to depend on a D win in Georgia. If control of the Senate comes down to the runoff in Georgia, who knows what result that dumpster fire would produce.
StellaLink_the dog : “It would be nice to not have to depend on a D win in Georgia”
It would indeed. You’d hope the few score thousand Libertarian voters have the self-respect not to vote for Walker, but I’m not ready to count on that. In my opinion, Libertarians’ ironclad “standards” get mushy at the drop of a hat. Better Masto win and Trump tell his supporters to stay home, just like the last Georgia runoff.
(Sorry to miss the joke. In this forum I’d be laughing inappropriately all the time if I took an expansive view of humor)
Don’t wanna become another David Bhear, but need to add this from the WaPo:
“Insights from The Post’s model: According to our model, Cortez Masto is behind in the vote count, but slightly favored to win after all votes are counted. Laxalt still has a chance”
Most recent updates close the gap in Nevada. Now less than 1000 vote difference. But, not all the chickens have gone under the bridge yet.
In Nevada, mailed ballots are counted if they arrive tomorrow, if post marked on or before election day. We should hope that all those ballots post marked in NYC get there on time.
nb — another joke.
(even dull-witted old me got that’un)
It’s not just the Libertarian voters. It’s whether the same percentage of Warnock voters as Walker voters show up for the runoff.
Needless to say, that’s true. However, this from Geoffrey Skelley of 538:
In Nevada, Clark County reported a batch of around 27,000 votes, and as expected, this group of mostly mail-in ballots went heavily Democratic. In the Senate race, Cortez Masto won 63 percent of this batch to Laxalt’s 33 percent, which cut Cortez Masto’s statewide deficit to a razor-thin 0.1 percentage points — just 798 votes …… ABC News now estimates there are close to 70,000 ballots left to tally statewide, and more than 55,000 are in Clark and Washoe counties, so Cortez Masto’s chances of taking the lead look high”
I have every hope Walker voters stay at home on 06Dec, shades drawn, curled-up whimpering in a fetal position. Of course I likewise hope Warnock voters don’t get complacent, so there’s that. Neither hope seems extravagant. Me winning the two-billion lottery or the Dems keeping the House? THAT seems extravagant!
No gloating! Pride goeth yada yada.
“Yet the Amended Complaint alleged that Mr. Dolan was a resident of New York. The Trump lawyers’ answer:
[I]t must be noted that Charles Dolan is an incredibly common name, and Plaintiff’s counsel’s traditional search methods identified countless individuals with said name across the country, many of whom reside in New York.”
I would bet beaucoup innerweb bucks that they confused Charles Dolan, Democrat media exec, with Charles Dolan, Cablevision founder and father of the worst owner in the NBA.
Ahh, so government does remember it’s wrong to turn the power of government against one’s political opponents.
Baby steps…
Oh look, another Putinbot. Fuck off, Putinbot.
Krayt : “Ahh, so government does remember it’s wrong to turn the power of government against one’s political opponents”
Speaking of which, did anyone see Trump’s latest rant on DeSantis?
“…I also fixed his campaign, which had completely fallen apart. I was all in for Ron, and he beat [Democrat Andrew] Gillum, but after the Race, when votes were being stolen by the corrupt Election process in Broward County, and Ron was going down ten thousand votes a day, along with now-Senator Rick Scott, I sent in the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys, and the ballot theft immediately ended, just prior to them running out of the votes necessary to win. I stopped his Election from being stolen…”
Huh. So DJT ordered the FBI and DOJ to intervene in a state election count over “fraud” that wasn’t reported before, then or since? Sounds like pure election fraud to me, but all on Trump’s part. And the evidence is a confession, tied-up nicely in a self-incriminating tweet-like excretion.
Of course I can anticipate Trump’s defenders: Oh, everyone knows he lies like other people breathe. That’s what his defenders will say, mind you…..
I am by no means a Trump defender, but I suspect that Trump is lying about DeSantis’s race. It is still worth investigating.
As expected, your takeaway is missing a few key details.
It is wrong to corruptly use the power of government against your political opponent.
It is not wrong to have the rule of law applied when your political opponent decides to willfully and deliberately commit crimes.
In addition to the lawyers being sanctioned, the Trump campaign should be ordered to disgorge the funds that it raised by using this frivolous lawsuit as a prop for its fundraising purposes.
This may be part of the real story. Trump has his lawyers file lawsuits that are going no place. He then raises money to support the lawsuits. The defendants are harassed. The Trump lawyers are sanctioned. Trump keeps the money. Great scam.
It’s part of the scam, along with the payments from Vlad. The indictment is still coming.
Vlad doesn’t have the dollars to spare these days.
True, but I wonder how many guarantees he has in place for Trump’s debts.
The sub-headline says this was “sloppy” legal filings. It wasn’t. The court found the lawyers acted intentionally.
This is all political. Clinton appointed the judge. He says Trump cherry-picked facts to support his case. Sounds like most lawsuits to me.
” Sounds like most lawsuits to me. ”
Are you a lawyer?
Do you have any advanced degree?
Are you a college graduate?
What do we reckon? Is this one a Putinbot, or someone too stupid even to get paid for posting Kremlin propaganda?
If a Defendant says “I’m not the John Smith you think I am, I don’t live in Florida, I live in Virginia, you frackin’ served me in Virginia”
The response shouldn’t be “Well you’re really John Smith from NY, and look, the evidence is that we found a bunch of people in the NY phone book also named John Smith”.
It is actually that bad. And that’s sanctionable no matter who appointed the judge.
It was actually worse than that. They said ‘how should we be able to tell the difference? Look how dishonest this guy is, he’s got a whole bunch of other people to use the same name just to confuse us’.
Bunch of krakenpots.
Deftly played.
That sounds familiar somehow…
This is a good thing. I don’t know enough about the process to know if this is normal or not. But I would hope that all attorneys who file frivolous lawsuits get sanctioned. It should be the norm.
I wonder why the judge did not sanction Donald Trump in addition to the lawyers. Rule 11(c)(1) states that “the court may impose an appropriate sanction on any attorney, law firm, or party that violated the rule or is responsible for the violation.” Rule (c)(5)(A) prohibits a monetary sanction against a represented party for violating Rule 11(b)(2).
It seems to me that sanctions against the attorneys are appropriate for violating Rule 11(b)(2), and sanctions against Trump are appropriate for violating Rule 11(b)(1), causing the suit to be presented for an improper purpose.
All of this was still the attorneys’ responsibility. It’s expected that clients will want to sue people and sincerely believe that they are liable for some wrongdoing, but the attorney has to step in and explain that there isn’t any viable case against them.
I can see sanctions being imposed against a party if the party is lying to or deceiving his own attorney, for instance, and that messes up the case.
A litigant who signs a false affidavit submitted to a court might encounter some difficulty, too.
Huh…..
“Plaintiff deliberately misrepresented public documents by selectively using some portions while omitting other information including findings and conclusions that contradicted his narrative. This occurred with the Danchenko Indictment, the Department of Justice Inspector General’s Report for Operation Hurricane, and the Mueller Report. It was too frequent to be accidental.”
When the media did this EXACT THING we called it Freedom of the Press. Ought to make you think. (Yes I am aware of the function different of a court filing and a news out, no need to strawman that, but if this doesn’t make you think about the larger point then you are completely missing it and will no matter what.)
Jimmy the Dane: “…no need to strawman that…”
Pot, meet kettle.
And you proved my point about not getting the point.
Try thinking for once.
Actually Rule 11 standards are not all that different from the “actual malice” standard for defamation. The duty to investigate is stronger under Rule 11, and I think one could not recover damages for a misrepresentation of law, no matter how frivolous, as that would be pure opinion. Other than that, both standards require that one not ignore facts within one’s knowledge. When the press does that, it is defamation.
As you acknowledge, Trump, his supporters or any rando with a twitter feed was perfectly free to, and did, make these same allegations, echoed by some of the press without liability. Are you saying that we should seriously consider some kind of sanction, absent defamation liability, that would punish such allegations in non-litigation contexts?
Is there a rule of law which decrees that sanctions against attorneys shall be no greater than peanuts? Seems like in the usual scale of Trump-lawsuit legal fees a $50,000 sanction is not a material deterrent. Maybe an embarrassment, but that presumes capacity to be embarrassed.
The $50,000 is a penalty. Dolan was awarded $16,274.23 in legal fees. There is a joint motion for sanctions, filed by other defendants, which has not been ruled on yet. So the attorneys will end up paying more than $50,000.
I agree that, in the case of Trump, the sum may be inadequate. Multiple Trump attorneys have been sanctioned or even disbarred. My impression is that most attorneys have gotten the message, but Trump is able to find the few who haven’t.
That was my first reaction, too. I’ve recently been involved in a corporate lawsuit and the legal fees for both sides have probably topped $500k after only a couple of months.
WTF can we hire competent litigators who charge $16k?
Meanwhile, even Trump’s supposedly good lawyers, Kise and Trusty, are looking to get sanctioned also. From their 11th circuit opposition to the government’s appeal of Cannon’s orders:
This is utterly false. The search warrant was for all government or presidential records.
Trump’s appellate brief also recites (p. 2) that “During his term in office, President Trump exercised his discretion under the Presidential Records Act (‘PRA’), 44 U.S.C. § 2201, et. seq., to categorize certain records as ‘Presidential’ and others as ‘personal.’”
There is conspicuously no cite to the record for this claim. That is no doubt because Trump submitted no evidence whatsoever to the trial court — no affidavit, no declaration, no verification of pleadings.
They also make the claim that despite the clear text of the law, that Trump can classify documents as personal or Presidential without regard to what the law actually says, and that nobody can do anything about it absent a civil suit.
They also continue to pretend not to understand that even if the documents were personal, that would not mean he’s necessarily entitled to have them returned to him. (Nor does that have anything at all to do with the special master issue. The only purpose of a special master is to sort privileged from unprivileged.) Personal property is seized all the time in a law enforcement search. It’s called “evidence.”
Although I think they were also referring to things like the love letters from Kim Jong, Turnip commingled classified docs with actual personal items. Most likely, those classified docs found in his desk drawer, cigar box, and safe. As I understand it once they found classified docs they grabbed everything that was with them, which is apparently how such things work.
The lesson being: keep your personal shit and your stolen classified docs separate if you don’t want the feds scooping up your personal shit when they come for the stolen docs.
The lawyers in question are:
Alina Habba, Michael T. Madaio, Habba Madaio & Associates, Peter Ticktin, Jamie Alan Sasson, and The Ticktin Law Group
Just wondering if anyone is familiar with any of them.
Mr. Ticktin, who apparently attended New York Military Academy (as did Trump, I believe), claims the movie “Philadelphia” was originally to be named “Miami,” after one of his cases. I know the screenwriter of Philadelphia. Never any mention of Ticktin or Miami; instead, references to a case in Philadelphia and another in Boston. I will ask him about this, but my tentative take is that Mr. Ticktin may be a natural fit with Trump.
Also, there is this.
Habba is the parking garage lawyer.
Hey! I’m a parking garage lawyer (or at least I was until I lost the account to somebody better connected).
Well, then, no offense, but I don’t think you should be representing a former president of the United States in a nine-figure lawsuit.
Maybe not, but I would have done a better job than these guys did.
The judge is a homosexual Clinton appointee. No surprise with this ruling.
What facts support your assertion as to the judge’s orientation? And how on earth does that matter?
Well, there’s certainly a pattern here somewhere…
There is a good reason why Trump cannot get any first-tier lawyers to represent him. What amazes me is how far they get by exploiting the forbearance of the courts in which they appear. And how few sanctions like this have been written up.
MAGA: My Attorneys Got Attorneys.
“Hi, I’m rich, will you accept a large fee to sue my enemies?”
“Sure, what could go wrong?”
The sanctions are justified. The amount is too light in my opinion.
Judge Park’s concurrence in the 2nd Circuit vaccination case gives “strong Alito” its maximum force: the very act of giving medical but not religious exemptions is itself evidence of anti-religious animosity.
I will repeat my hypothetical.
Jihadi John sues, claiming that the murder statutes are based on anti-religious animosity. These statutes give an exception for people who kill in self-defence, but not to people who kill for religious reasons. That differential treatment of people who kill for self-preservation vs. because God tells them to is itself smoking-gun conclusive evidence that the murder statutes are drenched in anti-religious hate, pure animosity toward religious Jihadis like John, and therefore must be struck down to the extent they purport to prohibit Jihadi John’s chosen form of religious worship.
Does the Park concurrence support Jihadi John’s case? Why or why not?
That is, the rationale underlying the self-defense exception – that risk to owns own life life trumps a requirement not to harm others – is essentially the same in both cases.
I understand that medical exceptions encompass more than just risk to life itself and the set of permissable medical exceptions would need to be narrowed to make the two cases more comparable. However, Park’s concurrence doesn’t seem to depend on the scope of permissable medical exceptions. It seems to be based on a blanket “if you give medical exceptions, you must give religious exceptions.”
This would seem to suggest that life preservation simply isn’t a good enough reason to let the state out of the religious animosity vise.
And I suspect that this consequence, and its implications for abortion, are likely to lead Barrett and Kavanaugh to distance themselves from the broad Alito interpretation of Lukumi Bablo Aye’s limitation of Smith, or at least from the maximalist version of it.
I read the ORDER GRANTING MOTION FOR SANCTIONS before I read this article. (There is a link at the top of the article.) It would be be entertaining if it weren’t so scary.
Thanks to Liz Dye for showing just how bad the suit was in the space allotted for a web article.
False claim one (this is in Ms Dye’s article):
Note that “Plaintiff’s counsel’s traditional search methods identified countless individuals with said name across the country, many of whom reside in New York.” was in the Amended Complaint, after Plaintiff’s counsel received return of service from Dolan’s address in Virginia in the original suit and Dolan stat[ed] under oath that he lived in Virginia.
If there is one false claim, that is a [s]loppy legal filing[].
False claim two:
“As was the practice throughout the Amended Complaint, Plaintiff cherry-picked portions which supported his narrative while ignoring those that undermined or contradicted it. Mr. Trump’s lawyers persisted in this misrepresentation after being warned by the sanctions motion, and they doubled down on this falsehood in their response to the motion”.
If there are two false claims that is spiteful.
False claims three plus:
In the original Complaint, [Dolan] “was identified as a former chairman of the DNC, a senior official in the Clinton Campaign, and a close associate of and advisor to Hillary Clinton.”
In The Warning Letter “counsel for Mr. Dolan wrote the attorneys for Mr. Trump. They warned: …
4. That Mr. Dolan had never been chairman of the DNC.
5. That Ms. Clinton was on record through a spokesperson as stating she had no recollection of Mr. Dolan.
“[In] the Amended Complaint, Mr. Dolan was identified somewhat more vaguely as the former chairman of a “national Democratic political organization. Elsewhere, he was described as a “senior Clinton Campaign Official.”
“The [sanctions] motion further explained that Mr. Dolan’s role in the Clinton Campaign was limited to serving as a volunteer, knocking on doors in New Hampshire in the last week of the campaign.”
If there are three plus false claims that is vindictive and malicious.
Sanctions to the Court of $50,000 are grossly inadequate. Divided among all the counsels, they are not a deterrent.
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