Trump’s RICO lawsuit against the Government, the Clintons, and everyone in the world who has annoyed him has been summarily dismissed, with a flourish. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.610157/gov.uscourts.flsd.610157.267.0.pdf
Plaintiff’s theory of this case, set forth over 527 paragraphs in the first 118 pages of the Amended Complaint, is difficult to summarize in a concise and cohesive manner. It was certainly not presented that way. Nevertheless, I will attempt to distill it here.
Defendants now move to dismiss the Amended Complaint as “a series of disconnected political disputes that Plaintiff has alchemized into a sweeping conspiracy among the many individuals Plaintiff believes to have aggrieved him.” (DE 226 at 1). They argue that dismissal is warranted because Plaintiff’s claims are both “hopelessly stale”—that is, foreclosed by the applicable statutes of limitations—and because they fail on the merits “in multiple independent respects.” (Id. at 2). As they view it, “[w]hatever the utilities of [the Amended Complaint] as a fundraising tool, a press release, or a list of political grievances, it has no merit as a lawsuit.” (Id.). I agree. [ouch]
Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is 193 pages in length, with 819 numbered paragraphs. It contains 14 counts, names 31 defendants, 10 “John Does” described as fictitious and unknown persons, and 10 “ABC Corporations” identified as fictitious and unknown entities. Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is neither short nor plain, and it certainly does not establish that Plaintiff is entitled to any relief.
More troubling, the claims presented in the Amended Complaint are not warranted under existing law. In fact, they are foreclosed by existing precedent, including decisions of the Supreme Court. … But these are emblematic of the audacity of Plaintiff’s legal theories and the manner in which they clearly contravene binding case law.
Many of the Amended Complaint’s characterizations of events are implausible because they lack any specific allegations which might provide factual support for the conclusions reached. … What the Amended Complaint lacks in substance and legal support it seeks to substitute with length, hyperbole, and the settling of scores and grievances.
In presenting a pleading, an attorney certifies that it is not being presented for any improper purpose; that the claims are warranted under the law; and that the factual contentions have evidentiary support. I have serious doubts about whether that standard is met here.
To say that Plaintiff’s 193-page, 819-paragraph Amended Complaint is excessive in length would be putting things mildly.
But even if Plaintiff’s RICO claims were timely, they still fail on the merits at every step of the analysis. Under RICO, it is “unlawful for any person employed by or associated with any enterprise engaged in, or the activities of which affect, interstate or foreign commerce, to conduct or participate, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of such enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity . . . .” … Defendants argue that Counts I and II of the Amended Complaint fail to satisfy any of these elements. I agree. While Plaintiff’s failure to satisfy any one of the RICO elements is sufficient to grant Defendants’ Motion, for the sake of completeness I address them all below.
Because Plaintiff has failed to allege the essential elements of an injurious falsehood claim, this count must be dismissed. And as for Count IV, the conspiracy allegations are formulaic, conclusory, and implausible.
In Count V, Plaintiff sues: his own Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein; former Director at the FBI, James Comey; former Deputy Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe; lawyers for the FBI, Kevin Clinesmith and Lisa Page; an official with the Department of Justice, Bruce Ohr, and his wife Nellie Ohr; and an FBI agent, Peter Stzok, for malicious prosecution. But Plaintiff was never prosecuted.
At its core, the problem with Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is that Plaintiff is not attempting to seek redress for any legal harm; instead, he is seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him, and this Court is not the appropriate forum.
Fundamentally, Plaintiff cannot state a RICO claim without two predicate acts, and, after two attempts, he has failed to plausibly allege even one. Plaintiff cannot state an injurious falsehood claim without allegations of harm to his property interests. And Plaintiff cannot state a malicious prosecution claim without a judicial proceeding, but he unsuccessfully attempts to misconstrue, misstate, and misapply the law to do so anyway. Moreover, Plaintiff’s statutory claims premised on the DNS data rest on a misconstruction of the conduct those laws proscribe and the harms they remediate. Because Plaintiff was unable to cure his Complaint even with all its shortcomings clearly laid out for him, and because most of Plaintiff’s claims are not only unsupported by any legal authority but plainly foreclosed by binding precedent as set forth by the Supreme Court and the Eleventh Circuit, I find that amendment would be futile and that this case should be dismissed with prejudice as to the Defendants that have raised merits arguments.
(7) I reserve jurisdiction to adjudicate issues pertaining to sanctions.
