Trump fined nearly $1 million for ‘strategic abuse’ of legal system

NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump dropped a lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James on Friday just a day after a federal judge slapped him and a lawyer with a nearly $1 million fine for filing bogus cases against political enemies.

Trump pulled the plug on the Florida suit against James after being slapped down by U.S. District Judge Middlebrooks over a separate lawsuit that accused Hillary Clinton of engineering the Russia collusion probe.

“This litigation has all the telltale signs of being both vexatious and frivolous,” Middlebrooks told Trump’s lawyers ahead of his decision to give up the ghost on the James suit.

Trump was suing James, whom he regularly trashes on social media, in apparently retaliation for her office’s $250 million civil suit against him and his selfnamed real estate firm.

Similar Trump actions against James were already dismissed by state and federal judges in New York.

The decision to abandon the Hail Mary lawsuit against James came after Middlebrooks on Thursday ordered Trump and lawyer Alina Habba to pay $937,989.39 for abusing the legal system to make political points.

“(Trump) is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, Middlebrooks wrote in a blistering 46-page ruling. “He cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer. He knew full well the impact of his actions.”

Middlebrooks had already dismissed Trump’s original lawsuit, which accused Clinton and others of orchestrating “a malicious conspiracy” to accuse his 2016 winning campaign of colluding with Russia.