MIAMI (CN) — Former President Donald Trump filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday against Hillary Clinton, her campaign, the Democratic National Committee and several others he claims worked together to try to destroy his 2016 presidential campaign.
According to the complaint filed in Miami, the Clinton campaign and the DNC created and spread false allegations that Trump had colluded with the Russian government to influence the election in his favor.
"Under the guise of ‘opposition research,’ ‘data analytics,’ and other political stratagems, the Defendants nefariously sought to sway the public’s trust," the complaint states. "They worked together with a single, self-serving purpose: to vilify Donald J. Trump. Indeed, their far-reaching conspiracy was designed to cripple Trump’s bid for presidency by fabricating a scandal that would be used to trigger an unfounded federal investigation and ignite a media frenzy."
The DNC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit claims that through the formation of a racketeering enterprise, the Democrats had a clear objective of defrauding Trump's political career and that their allegations significantly affected the election. Trump defeated Clinton by a margin of 304 electoral votes to 227.
The complaint further alleges that Clinton and the DNC's means of gathering data "abused and exploited access to non-public and highly sensitive data sources and/or servers, and acquired obtained [sic] in excess of authorization and/or stole proprietary, sensitive and confidential internet data, records and/or information."
Trump, represented by attorney Peter Ticktin in Deerfield Beach, Florida, also claims the defendants conspired to pay Christopher Steele and his private investigation firm Fusion GPS to find evidence of Russian ties to the Trump campaign.
With one of Steele's informants, Igor Danchenko, indicted in November on charges of lying to the FBI about his sources for claims used in the infamous Steele dossier, the lawsuit argues the report "was riddled with misstatements, misrepresentations and, most of all, flat out lies."
Also charged with lying to the FBI, Washington-based attorney Michael Sussman is named as a defendant in Trump's lawsuit for alleged obstruction of justice regarding his claims of a secret channel of communications between the Trump Organization and a Russian bank.
"Despite this knowledge, that no evidence existed of the collusion, the defendants further conspired to publish the false information to third parties, such as the FBI, other governmental agencies, the news-media outlets, and the U.S. population, in an attempt to smear the plaintiff’s [sic] to harm his chance of being elected and properly administrating his office of president of the United States," the complaint seeks.
Asserting claims of racketeering conspiracy, injurious falsehood, computer fraud and malicious prosecution, the 45th president demands at least $24 million for lost business opportunities and to make up for the money he claims he spent on defending himself against the defendants’ accusations and the federal investigations and proceedings which arose as a result.
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