Former President Donald Trump has filed suit against his 2016 Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, and others for allegedly crafting the false “Russian collusion” narrative that hampered him throughout his presidency.
According to reports, the suit also claims that Clinton and others conspired to alter the outcome of the 2016 election with the fake narrative.
“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 45th President of the United States alleged in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Florida.
According to Reuters, the suit also alleges “racketeering” and a “conspiracy to commit injurious falsehood,” among other claims.
The report continues:
The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages. Trump said he was “forced to incur expenses in an amount to be determined at trial, but known to be in excess of twenty-four million dollars ($24,000,000) and continuing to accrue, in the form of defense costs, legal fees, and related expenses.”
The defendants in Trump’s lawsuit include Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer.
A dossier written by Steele, which was circulated to the FBI and media outlets before the November 2016 election, set out unproven assertions that Russia had embarrassing information about Trump and some of his Republican campaign’s advisers and that Moscow was working behind the scenes to defeat Clinton.
The lawsuit comes on the heels of more potential trouble for Clinton.
The Department of Justice is set to produce a “large volume” of classified materials and documents this week pertaining to the ‘Russiagate’ case involving the main source for Steele’s dossier that attempted to sabotage then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s candidacy and subsequent presidency, Conservative Brief .
“That’s according to special counsel John Durham, who made the revelation in a Tuesday filing in which he also asked a federal judge to extend a deadline for the production of classified discovery, in compliance with the Classified Information Procedures Act, a statute outlining the manner in which classified documents must be protected in criminal cases,” the outlet’s report continued.
“To date, the government has produced over 60,000 documents in unclassified discovery. A portion of these documents were originally marked ‘classified’ and the government has worked with the appropriate declassification authorities to produce the documents in an unclassified format,” Durham said in the filing submitted to the federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia.
“However, recent world events in Ukraine have contributed to delays in the production of classified discovery. The officials preparing and reviewing the documents at the FBI and intelligence agencies are heavily engaged in matters related to Ukraine,” Durham added.
“Nevertheless, the government will produce a large volume of classified discovery this week and will continue its efforts to produce documents in classified discovery on a rolling basis, and no later than the proposed deadlines set forth below,” Durham wrote.