Donald Trump sues Hillary Clinton over 2016 Russian collusion claims [Video]

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Former President Donald Trump sued 2016 U.S. presidential election rival Hillary Clinton over claims that he and his campaign were colluding with Russia.
• Trump filed the suit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida more than five years after the election.
• The sprawling lawsuit claims there was a malicious conspiracy to connect him to Russia in 2016.

Former President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton on Thursday. Trump is accusing his 2016 U.S. presidential election rival and several other Democrats of attempting to rig that election by connecting his campaign to Russia.

The 108-page lawsuit includes Trump’s grievances against the people who were associated with the probe of his campaign’s ties to Russia in 2016. It also includes details discovered in the ongoing investigation by special counsel John Durham, details about the FBI’s Russia probe and special counsel Robert Mueller’s succeeding investigation.

Aside from Clinton, the lawsuit also accuses her campaign, several campaign aides, former FBI Director James Comey, and the Democratic National Committee.

“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,” the lawsuit says. “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 defendants were accused of obstruction of justice and theft of trade secrets, as well as illegal hacking into Trump’s private communications.

A representative for Hillary Clinton did not immediately respond for comment.

The suit seeks more than $24 million as compensatory and punitive damages “in the form of defense costs, legal fees, and related expenses.”

Former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele is also named as one of the defendants.

Steele’s dossier includes unproven statements that Russia had embarrassing information about Trump and his GOP advisers. It also claimed that Russia was working behind the scenes for Trump to defeat Clinton. The dossier was handed out to the FBI and media outlets before the 2016 election.

In 2020, an investigation concluded that Russia used Paul Manafort and the WikiLeaks website in an attempt to help Trump win the 2016 presidential election. The 966-page report was issued by a U.S. Senate committee.

Manafort, a Republican political operative, worked on Trump’s presidential campaign for five months in 2016.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller headed a two-year-long probe of the alleged election interference by Moscow.

Mueller released a full-scale report in 2019, detailing numerous ties between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. No Trump associate was charged with a criminal conspiracy.

In his report, Mueller said that “the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”

Source: Reuters