“Under the guise of ‘opposition research,’ ‘data analytics,’ and other political stratagems, the Defendants nefariously sought to sway the public’s trust,” says the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Florida. “They worked together with a single, self-serving purpose: to vilify Donald J. Trump.”
Over 108 pages, the lawsuit rails against many of Trump’s political opponents and highlights the grievances that he has complained about for years. It claims Democrats and government officials perpetrated a grab bag of offenses, from a racketeering conspiracy to a malicious prosecution, computer fraud and theft of secret internet data. The lawsuit asks for more than $24 million in costs and damages.
The civil suit alleges that Clinton and top Democrats hired lawyers and researchers to fabricate information tying Trump to Russia, and then peddled those lies to the media and to the US government, in hopes of hobbling his chances of winning in 2016. Trump claims they were assisted by “Clinton loyalists” at the FBI, who abused their powers to investigate him out of political animus.
John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton’s 2016 campaign and one of the lawsuit’s defendants, tweeted that part of the suit might be a “hoot.”
CNN has reached out to many of the defendants for comment. Some attorneys for defendants named in the lawsuit were still digesting it on Thursday.
“We haven’t had a chance to read the complaint, but knowing the former President, there’s probably very little in there that’s true,” said Aitan Goelman, who represents former FBI official Peter Strzok.
Special counsel John Durham, for the past three years, has been investigating a lot of the conduct that Trump mentions in his lawsuit. Durham has not gone as far as what Trump claims.
The investigation established that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump win, through a hack-and-leak operation against Clinton, and with a sophisticated disinformation campaign targeting US voters on social media. The probe also found that Trump’s campaign sought to capitalize on Russia’s interference, though it did not establish a criminal conspiracy between Trump aides and any Russians.
Carter Page, a former Trump presidential campaign adviser, also sued some of same people Trump named as defendants on Thursday, but his lawsuit is more narrowly focused around having his privacy rights violated when he was surveilled by the FBI in the Russia investigation.
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report.