The Daily Fuckup

A federal judge in Florida on Jan. 19, 2023 ordered Donald Trump, his lead lawyer Alina Habba and Habba Madaio & Associates to pay $937,989.39 in sanctions over a lawsuit tied to Hillary Clinton and other defendants. Judge Donald Middlebrooks said the case should never have been filed and described it as frivolous, legally deficient and brought for an improper political purpose.

The sanctions order came after the court had already thrown out the underlying case. In the Jan. 19 ruling, Middlebrooks said the amended complaint lacked a cognizable legal claim and that Trump and his lawyers had persisted even after the defendants identified the problems. He found that the conduct justified shifting fees and costs to Trump, Habba and the firm, and said they were jointly and severally liable for the total amount.

Middlebrooks’ order also pointed to the scale of the litigation, noting that 31 individuals and entities had been drawn into the dispute. The court said the lawsuit was not just weak, but an abuse of the judicial process that wasted resources and advanced a political narrative instead of a viable legal theory.

The dollar figure is not rounded in the order: $937,989.39. The date matters too. Jan. 22 was the edition date for this story, not the date the sanctions were issued. The order itself was signed and entered three days earlier, on Jan. 19, 2023.