Former President Donald Trump on Thursday sued Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James B. Comey and others involved in years of accusations that his campaign worked with Russia to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.
The lengthy lawsuit claims the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee and others conspired to perpetrate a fraud and obstructed justice, preventing the president from doing his job while in office. The complaint says Mr. Trump was forced to spend more than $24 million defending himself against the false accusation that he had colluded with Russia.
“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 108-page complaint reads. “The actions taken in furtherance of their scheme — falsifying evidence, deceiving law enforcement, and exploiting access to highly sensitive data sources — are so outrageous, subversive and incendiary that even the events of Watergate pale in comparison.”
The accusations that Mr. Trump’s campaign worked with Russia during the 2016 election led to a two-year investigation headed by special counsel Robert Mueller, which dogged Mr. Trump throughout his presidency but did not result in any criminal charges against him or his family.
Special counsel John Durham has linked Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee to the false narrative of Trump-Russia collusion that was peddled to the FBI and the news media.
Mr. Durham is investigating the early stages of the FBI’s Russia collusion probe. His findings have resulted in the indictment of lawyer Michael Sussmann, who worked for the DNC and is accused of lying about that relationship when he peddled the conspiracy theory to agents.
The collusion narrative was pushed by former British spy Christopher Steele, who compiled a dossier of salacious, unverified accusations about Mr. Trump and Russia.
Mr. Steele was hired by Fusion GPS, which was hired by Perkins Coie, a law firm that represented the DNC in 2016.
Mr. Trump’s lawsuit names more than two dozen defendants, including Mrs. Clinton, the DNC, Mr. Steele, Mr. Sussmann, the Perkins Coie law firm where Mr. Sussmann worked, former Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, Nellie Ohr, former Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, Mr. Comey, former FBI agent Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith, and former FBI official Andrew McCabe.
The lawsuit claims they worked in concert to create false accusations about Mr. Trump to discredit his candidacy and to spearhead federal investigations. They also used news media to bolster the accusations, according to the lawsuit.
“The Clinton Campaign and DNC —admittedly on a ‘mission’ to ‘raise the alarm’ about their contrived Trump-Russia link —repeatedly fed disinformation to the media and shamelessly promoted their false narratives,” the complaint read.
The litigation, filed in federal court in Florida, asks the judge to order a jury trial as the former president seeks to recover financial damages.
“It was a goal of the Defendants’ conspiracy, and indeed a foreseeable and natural consequence of the same, that this substantial economic harm would befall Trump. The plaintiff does not claim nor seek any compensation for damage to his reputation, but rather, he seeks damages for the cost of dealing with the legal issues and political issues,” the lawsuit states.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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