A Florida choose sanctioned former President Donald Trump and one in every of his attorneys, ordering them to pay practically $1 million for submitting what he stated was a bogus lawsuit towards Trump’s 2016 rival Hillary Clinton and others.

In a blistering submitting on Thursday, U.S. District Decide Donald M. Middlebrooks accused Trump of a “sample of abuse of the courts” for submitting frivolous lawsuits for political functions, which he stated “undermines the rule of legislation” and “quantities to obstruction of justice.”

“Right here, we’re confronted with a lawsuit that ought to by no means have been filed, which was utterly frivolous, each factually and legally, and which was introduced in unhealthy religion for an improper objective,” he wrote.

Citing Trump’s current authorized motion towards the Pulitzer Prize board, New York’s legal professional basic, huge tech firms and CNN, he described Trump as “a prolific and complex litigant” who makes use of the courts “to hunt revenge on political adversaries.”

“He’s the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial course of,” he wrote.

The ruling required Trump and his legal professional, Alina Habba, to pay practically $938,000 to the defendants within the case.

A spokesman for Trump and Habba didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark late Thursday. Middlebrooks in September dismissed the go well with Trump had filed towards Clinton, former prime FBI officers and the Democratic Social gathering, rejecting the previous president’s claims that they and others conspired to sink his profitable presidential marketing campaign by alleging ties to Russia.

The lawsuit had named as defendants Clinton and a few of her prime advisers, in addition to former FBI Director James Comey and different FBI officers concerned within the investigation into whether or not Trump’s 2016 presidential marketing campaign had coordinated with Russia to sway the end result of the election.

He stated then the go well with contained “evident structural deficiencies” and that lots of the “characterizations of occasions are implausible.”

Within the wake of the sanctions, Trump on Friday withdrew his lawsuit towards New York Legal professional Normal Letitia James. The case, in federal court docket in Florida, had additionally been earlier than Middlebrooks.

Trump sued James in November in response to her lawsuit alleging he and his firm mislead banks and others concerning the worth of belongings in a follow she dubbed “The artwork of the steal.”

Trump, a Republican, additionally sought to stop James, a Democrat, from having any oversight over the household belief that controls his firm. His 35-page criticism rehashed some claims from his beforehand dismissed lawsuit towards James in federal court docket in New York, irritating Middlebrooks, who wrote in a December order: “This litigation has all of the telltale indicators of being each vexatious and frivolous.”