Donald Trump on Thursday sued his rival in the 2016 US presidential election, Hillary Clinton, and several other Democrats, alleging that they tried to rig that election by tying his campaign to Russia.
The lawsuit covers a long list of grievances the former Republican president repeatedly aired during his four years in the White House after beating Ms Clinton, and comes at a time when he continues to falsely claim that his 2020 election defeat by Democratic President Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud.
“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,” Mr Trump alleged in a 108-page lawsuit filed in a federal court in Florida.
The suit alleges “racketeering” and a “conspiracy to commit injurious falsehood”, among other claims.
A Clinton representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages. Mr Trump said he was “forced to incur expenses in an amount to be determined at trial, but known to be in excess of $24 million and continuing to accrue, in the form of defence costs, legal fees and related expenses”.
The accused in Mr Trump's lawsuit include Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer.
A dossier written by Mr 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 Mr Trump and some of his Republican campaign's advisers, and that Moscow was working behind the scenes to defeat Ms Clinton.
A 966-page report issued by a Republican-led US Senate committee in 2020 concluded that Russia used Republican political operative Paul Manafort and the WikiLeaks website to try to help Mr Trump win the 2016 election.
Manafort, who was convicted of conspiracy against the US and fraud, worked on Mr Trump's presidential campaign for five months in 2016.
Russia’s alleged election interference, which Moscow denies, sparked a two-year US investigation headed by special counsel Robert Mueller.
In 2019, Mr Mueller released an exhaustive report that detailed numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign but did not charge any Trump associate with a criminal conspiracy.
Mr Mueller said in his report that “the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts”.
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