Trump tells Justice Thomas district judges must be stopped from intimidating his attorneys, uses Hillary Clinton RICO case to 'protect' presidency

After Donald Trump and his attorneys twice asked for — and twice received — 30-day extensions from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the president finally made his best pitch for revitalizing his failed and “frivolous” racketeering (RICO) lawsuit against Hillary Clinton.

The lawsuit broadly accused Democrats of conspiring to bankroll “an unthinkable plot” to tar the 2016 Trump campaign, cloud Trump’s first term as president through “a sinister link” to Russia, and harm his business interests, with Clinton at the top of the alleged Russiagate RICO conspiracy. But the case never got off the ground and was dismissed by a federal judge who said the Florida suit was a “frivolous” and “bad faith” action that warranted $1 million in sanctions against Alina Habba, the firm Habba Madaio & Associates, and Trump himself.

The president’s attorneys have a steep hill to climb. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wanted no part of reviewing the case en banc after a three-judge panel jettisoned the case that the district judge called “hopelessly complicated.”

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To bolster their appeal, attorneys Alejandro Brito and Richard C. Klugh asked Thomas for two months of extra time to conduct “substantial legal research” and produce a “clear, concise, and comprehensive petition for certiorari for the Court’s review” — all while reducing “any interruption of the work of the President in his full-time and vital role as Chief Executive.”

Thomas granted the requests, setting Oct. 9 as the new filing date.

Trump’s legal team followed through late on Friday, fleshing out its position that the 11th Circuit “concluded, in error and without reaching the underlying merits of the President’s civil claims,” that his claims were time-barred and worthy of “extreme sanctions.”

The 17-page petition obtained by Law&Crime shows that Trump’s team is hoping the justices will seize the chance to scold the lower courts for “wrongly punish[ing] a President and his lawyers for defending his Article II prerogatives.”

At the district court, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks rebuffed demands to recuse himself from the matter, stating that it was irrelevant that Bill Clinton appointed him to the bench. Middlebrooks said he had “never met or spoken with Bill or Hillary Clinton.”

The judge called Trump a “prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries” and the “mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process” who “cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer.”

“He knew full well the impact of his actions,” Middlebrooks went on, ordering the case dismissed and awarding the erstwhile defendants $66,274.73 and $937,989.39, respectively, in fees as a sanction.

The greater potential liability fell to Habba, Habba Madaio & Associates, and Trump for bringing a “lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose.” The lesser punishment went against Habba and her firm, attorneys Michael T. Madaio, Peter Ticktin, Jamie Alan Sasson, and the Ticktin Law Group for errors and falsehoods in claims against Charles Dolan.

Those punishments, if allowed to stand, foster an environment that “intimidates advocates, insulates judicial error, and obstructs the development of constitutional law,” the petition argued, referencing two other high-profile matters.

“This Court’s intervention is necessary to protect the Presidency, and to prevent judicial disagreement from becoming a license to punish its advocates,” the petition said, citing a judge’s challenged sanctions orders against Trump lawyers in Trump v. IRS and referencing the currently stalled Alien Enemies Act contempt proceeding in J.G.G. v. Trump.

“The decision also deepens a troubling pattern of sanctions, disciplinary referrals, and threats of personal punishment in disputes over Article II authority,” the filing continued.

Alejandro Brito, the Trump attorney a judge referred to the Florida bar in the IRS case, joined Richard Klugh and Josh Halpern on the brief at the Supreme Court.

Clinton attorney David Kendall had no comment on the petition.

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