OPINION:
President Trump’s hierarchy is signaling more criminal charges against Russia hoaxers besides the indictment of former FBI director and dossier impresario James B. Comey.
Out of office in 2022, Mr. Trump filed a nearly 200-page lawsuit in Florida, accusing several Democrats and FBI officials of conspiring against him with bogus Russia collusion claims. The list of defendants is a who’s who of 2016-2017 inquisitions.
The lawsuit, alleging malicious prosecution, was assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks, a Clinton appointee and former aide to a Democratic Florida governor. The Trump team asked him to quit the case because defendant Hillary Clinton’s husband had appointed him. The judge refused and then quickly dismissed the case in an opinion that dripped with mockery of Trump.
If not a guide to the future, the lawsuit does give a general idea of how Mr. Trump and his team might proceed and how they view Mr. Trump’s tormentors. For example, in the section on defendant Comey, who trafficked the dossier to judges, the intelligence agencies and the president-elect himself, the lawsuit states: “Comey leaked information, which was classified, regarding his private conversations with President Donald J. Trump, to a college professor friend, knowing that it would be shared to a reporter, causing an investigation.”
On Sept. 25, the Justice Department brought an indictment against Mr. Comey. The charge of making a false statement to a Senate committee involves the same Comey-professor arrangement.
The two-count indictment said Mr. Comey “did willfully and knowingly make a false, fictitious and fraudulent statement … by stating … that he, James B. Comey Jr., had not ‘authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports.’”
“Person 1” in the indictment is Mr. Trump. “Person 3” is Columbia University law school professor Daniel Richman. He is a longtime friend of Mr. Comey’s, whom the FBI director designated as a special government employee, allowing him access to classified secrets.
The FBI launched a leak investigation in 2017 because investigative matters related to Russia were appearing in newspapers. A subsequent FBI report, disclosed last month, said Mr. Comey hired Mr. Richman “so Comey could discuss sensitive matters, including classified information,” and “Comey also used Richman as a liaison to the media.”
On Oct. 15, FBI Director Kash Patel appeared on a “Just the News” streaming broadcast and outlined the road ahead. Of the previous FBI leadership and its role in pushing the Russia hoax, he said: “They were the ones … committing the most heinous crimes against the United States of America. … That motivates me, more than anything else, to root out the corruption that was embedded in this FBI.”
He added, “We are looking at so many different leads on criminal activity by those who were in positions of power. These indictments that you’ve seen and the ones that you’re going to see coming up here in the near future are just the beginning.”
Mr. Trump’s 2022 lawsuit is rich in Russia hoax players who depicted the president as an election conspirator with the Kremlin. It lists more than 30 people and organizations, led by Mrs. Clinton, whose presidential campaign financed the debunked Christopher Steele dossier.
Sen. Adam B. Schiff is there. While in the House, Mr. Schiff enthusiastically promoted the Russia hoax and the dossier. Also in the lawsuit is Fusion GPS, run by former Wall Street Journal reporters who dished the dossier to reporters and the FBI. Former FBI defendants included Mr. Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, who ran the infamous anti-Trump Crossfire Hurricane inquiry, and Mr. Strzok’s then-girlfriend, Lisa Page. Also listed is former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty to altering a CIA email.
Reads the lawsuit: “The Defendants, Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, and Clinesmith, acted with actual malice, as they knew that [Trump] was not colluding with Russia or, at a minimum, acted with reckless abandon as to the truth of whether the Plaintiff had colluded with Russia, and they knew that Crossfire Hurricane lacked a legitimate evidentiary basis and was based on a false and contrived premise.”
The future? I would conclude that because Mr. Comey has not been charged with any conspiracy offenses, perhaps his colleagues also will be spared. Still, given Mr. Patel’s predictions, something big is going to pop.
Judge Middlebrooks did more than dismiss the lawsuit. He also sanctioned Mr. Trump and his attorneys with fines totaling nearly $1 million.
“This case should never have been brought,” the judge said.
My view: Judge Middlebrooks’ dismissive approach to Mr. Trump’s lawsuit is flat wrong.
As an incoming president and president, Mr. Trump was subjected to unprecedented political sabotage by the FBI and Democrats based on a Russian-sourced dossier filled with false felony allegations.
Four months after Judge Middlebrooks’ January 2023 sanctions, special counsel John Durham issued a report that exposed the FBI’s wrongdoing. Add to that the fact that district court judges who approved dossier-inspired wiretaps rebuked the FBI in 2019 for misleading them. That same year, a damning Justice Department inspector general report emerged.
Mr. Trump filed an appeal through attorneys Alina Habba and Jesse R. Binnall. They accuse Judge Middlebrooks of a “fixed antipathy” toward Mr. Trump and of “engaging in … unfounded disparagement of President Trump.”
The case now sits with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has scheduled oral arguments in November.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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