Bill Clinton-appointed judge REJECTS Trump’s bid to have him removed from lawsuit against Hillary

A federal judge on Thursday refused Donald Trump’s request to stand aside from handling his lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, saying there was no legitimate reason why his appointment by President Bill Clinton should disqualify him.

In a strongly worded five-page ruling, Judge Donald Middlebrooks said he had never met the Clintons and hinted that Trump was ‘judge-shopping.’

‘Every federal judge is appointed by a president who is affiliated with a major political party, and, therefore, every federal judge could theoretically be viewed as beholden, to some extent or another,’ he wrote. 

‘As judges, we must all transcend politics.’

Trump last month filed a suit against Clinton and a slew of other Democrats, accusing them of trying to spread smears about him during the 2016 campaign. 

The case was assigned to Middlebrooks, who was appointed by President Clinton in 1997 to the Southern District of the Florida federal court.

In his Thursday ruling, he said all judges – by virtue of their appointment could be considered to have political backgrounds – but without any evidence to the contrary should be considered impartial.

He said that while judges had a duty to step aside if there were grounds for claims of partiality, they also had a duty not to step aside if complaints were being made as part of ‘litigation strategies’ – a course sometimes known as ‘judge-shopping.’ 

‘I have never met or spoken with Bill or Hillary Clinton,’ he added. 

‘Other than my appointment by Bill Clinton, I do not now have nor have I ever had any relationship with the Clintons.’ 

His order came in response to a motion filed by Trump’s lawyers at the start of the week.  

‘Due to the fact that the Defendant, Hillary Clinton is being sued by her former opponent for the United States presidency, an election that she lost, regarding serious allegations on her part, as well as her allies, of engaging in fraudulent and unlawful activities against the plaintiff, and because her husband nominated Judge Middlebrooks to the Federal Bench, there exists a reasonable basis that Judge Middlebrooks’ impartiality will be questioned,’ his lawyers Alina Habba and Peter Ticktin wrote.

Trump’s 108-page suit reads like a who’s who of rightwing conspiracy theory. t

The names include Christopher Steele, a former British spy who assembled a dossier of alleged links between Trump and Russia, James Comey, the then director of the FBI who investigated possible connections, and the Democratic National Committee. 

It accuses them of an ‘unthinkable plot’ to ‘weave a false narrative’ that Trump was working with a foreign power.

In the latest filing – first reported by Politico – Trump’s lawyer’s contend that Judge Middlebrooks could be seen as biased in overseeing a case against Clinton.  

‘There is no question that Judge Middlebrooks’ impartiality would be questioned by a disinterested observer, fully informed of the facts, due to judge’s relationship with the defendant, either, individually, or by the very nature of his appointment to the Federal Bench, by the defendant’s husband,’ they write.

Motions to disqualify are rarely granted. But recusals sometime occur when the judge has worked on political campaigns or has a relationship with the defendant. 

Trump, who beat Democratic nominee Clinton in the 2016 election, alleges racketeering, the theft of trade secrets, and ‘conspiracy to commit injurious falsehood,’ among other crimes. 

‘In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton and her cohorts orchestrated an unthinkable plot – one that shocks the conscience and is an affront to this nation’s democracy,’ reads his complaint. 

‘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 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 suit demands an unspecified amount of punitive damages. 

A federal investigation into Trump campaign’s ties with Russia triggered a string of convictions when some of his associates were found to have lied about meeting with Russian officials.

And a 966-page report issued by a Republican-led U.S. Senate committee in August 2020 detailed how Russia used Trump ally Paul Manafort and the WikiLeaks website to try to power Trump to victory in the 2016 election. 

But the episode has been used by Trump ever since to complain he was the victim of a witch hunt, providing with a cast of villains that have fuelled his rally addresses ever since.

Among the names is Jake Sullivan, who is now President Joe Biden’s national security adviser. As well as FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, whose text messages were seized on by Trump and his supporter as evidence of a plot, Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager Robbie Mook, and Charles Dolan, a PR consultant, who was connected to Steele’s dossier. 

The 108-page complaint turns his rhetoric into a lawsuit. It accuses Clinton and her allies of trying to create and leak false reports about ties between his campaign and Moscow. 

When those reports were proved false, Clinton’s allies took another course of action.

‘On a separate front, [indicted lawyer Michael] Sussmann would commission the information technology company, Neustar, to brazenly hack servers from highly-sensitive locations – including Donald J. Trump’s private residence, Trump Tower, and, most shockingly, the White House – to uncover proprietary data that could then be manipulated to give the impression that Trump was engaged in illegitimate business with a Russian bank, Alfa Bank,’ alleges the complaint.

Those hacking allegations triggered a storm in conservative media circles earlier this year.

In a February court filing, John Durham, the special counsel appointed to probe the FBI’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, alleged that a tech executive ‘exploited’ access to White House data to locate damning information about Trump.

The former president seized on the document to claim he was right to say that he had been hacked during the 2016 election.

But factcheckers were quick to point out that Trump was not in the White House at the time and that the data in question were often passed to third parties in order to hunt down for fraudsters of bad actors. 

Even so, the details have provided the former president with ammunition for his rally appearances and TV interviews, even as allies have quietly tried to nudge him away from trotting out historical grievances.  

The legal team who prepared the suit included a new name in the Trump team. Peter Ticktin, a courtroom litigator based an hour down the Florida coast from Mar-a-Lago, was Trump’s platoon sergeant when they both attended New York Military Academy. 

The suit, lodged in the Southern District of Florida, claims that the defendants efforts began in 2016 but continued after their defeat in an effort to discredit the Trump administration.

‘In short, the defendants, blinded by political ambition, orchestrated a malicious conspiracy to disseminate patently false and injurious information about Donald J. Trump and his campaign, all in the hopes of destroying his life, his political career and rigging the 2016 presidential election in favor of Hillary Clinton,’ reads the complaint.

‘When their gambit failed, and Donald J. Trump was elected, the Defendants’ efforts continued unabated, merely shifting their focus to undermining his presidential administration.’

Trump has faced a string of legal woes since leaving office.

A House committee is investigating the Jan. 6 violence, when Trump’s supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol last year.

And his businesses have been under scrutiny in both civil and criminal investigations in New York.