Hillary Clinton has asked a federal court to dismiss an unusual lawsuit filed by former President Donald Trump, which suggests that Clinton and other high-ranking Democrats illegally conspired to portray Trump as a Russian asset.According to The Hill, Clinton’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss on Wednesday.In court documents, lawyers for the long-time Secretary of State said that Trump’s complaint simply is not worthy of consideration.“Whatever the utility of Plaintiff’s Complaint as a fundraising tool, a press release, or a list of political grievances, it has no merit as a lawsuit, and should be dismissed with prejudice,” Clinton’s attorneys wrote.Clinton’s legal team also said that Trump’s allegations lack any factual grounding.One of the filings, says The Hill, said that the “only factually supported allegations concerning Clinton in the lengthy Complaint” are the dates on which she declared her candidacy and won the Democratic presidential nomination and the public statements she made about “purported” ties between Trump and the Russian government.

Donald Trump; image by Michael Vadon, via Flickr, CC BY 2.0, no changes.

“Clinton vigorously disputes the allegations in the Complaint,” her attorneys added. “But even taking these allegations as true, Plaintiff fails to plead any cognizable legal causes of action.”David Kendall, one of Clinton’s most prominent attorneys, observed that Trump—who ran against Clinton in 2016—waited years to address the supposed conspiracy in court.“Notwithstanding his rousing, all-caps call to action, Plaintiff waited four years, four months, and twenty-four days before filing suit,” Kendall wrote. “His delays render each of his claims untimely.”As LegalReader.com has reported before, Trump’s lawsuit claims that Clinton and her Democratic colleagues colluded to create a “false narrative” of Trump being sympathetic to 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,” Trump’s 108-page lawsuit states.“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,” it adds.However, Clinton says that her one-time presidential opponent is simply trying to cast run-of-the-mill politics as an illegal and international conspiracy.“At most, Plaintiff alleges that other entities sought to further Clinton’s candidacy and, after the election, politically opposed Plaintiff’s administration,” the motion to dismiss says. “This is conduct plainly protected by the First Amendment, and there is nothing unlawful about engagement in political activity.”Trump, notes POLITICO, had earlier asked the official overseeing the case—Judge Donald Middlebrooks—to recuse himself on grounds he was appointed to his post by former President Bill Clinton.Middlebrooks, however, declined, saying he has never met either Bill or Hillary Clinton, and that asking every judge to recuse themselves from cases involving political opponents of the president that appointed them would likely grind the courts to a halt.

Sources

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