Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and some others were sued by Former President Donald Trump in March for their alleged conspiracy to “use a false narrative” during the 2016 presidential election that Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia.
WATCH the video on Trump’s lawsuit:
Attorneys for Donald Trump have made the case that the statute of limitations should not be applied to his lawsuit against her because the “immense and unrelenting demands” of the job made it impossible for him to do it sooner. The RICO lawsuit by Trump alleges that his Democratic opponent in that election, Clinton, and other defendants in the alleged scheme tampered with evidence, misled law enforcement authorities and exploited access to “highly sensitive data sources” in such a way that “even what happened at Watergate would pale in comparison.”
The lawsuit is asking for more than $72 million in damages, a figure that is three times the $24 million in legal fees and other damages Trump is believed to have accumulated as a result of the alleged conduct of the defendants.
During the campaign in 2016, Donald Trump said at a press conference, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 missing emails.” It was a reference to electronic communications that had been erased from a private email server used by Hillary Clinton during her time as secretary of state. He is claiming that it involved a broad effort to wrongfully accuse him and his 2016 campaign of collusion with Russia and overwhelm him with onerous investigations, his lawyers wrote in a filing in a Florida federal court, as reported on Bloomberg.
Now, the former president says he was merely too busy during his one term to uncover the details of the alleged conspiracy. Donald Trump “was preoccupied with carrying out his eminently important presidential duties and was therefore impeded from effectively asserting his rights,” according to his lawyers. The suit was brought in March under what is known as the civil version of a racketeering statute typically used against organized crime. However, Clinton maintains that Trump missed the four-year statute of limitations because he only got to know this entire alleged conduct on or before Oct. 29, 2017, when he publicly charged that a number of the defendants were planning a “witch hunt” through Russia.
It was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. This took place over five years after he defeated Clinton in the race that was the subject of the alleged conspiracy to damage his election chances. There were a number of other defendants besides Clinton and the DNC, including Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former FBI officials Andrew McCabe, law firm Perkins Coie, research firm Fusion GPS, Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, and others.
U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, is considering a joint motion to throw out the case by Clinton and others. Their argument was that the lawsuit should be dismissed due to the statute of limitations.