WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump is suing 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her allies, accusing them of conspiring to topple his bid for the presidency during the run-up to the 2016 election.
The lawsuit covers a wide range of allegations that Trump frequently raised during his time in the White House after beating Clinton.
"Under the guise of 'opposition research,' 'data analytics,' and other political stratagems, the Defendants nefariously sought to sway the public's trust. They worked together with a single, self-serving purpose: to vilify Donald J. Trump," the civil lawsuit alleges.
The 108-page lawsuit was filed in federal court in Florida. It comes as Trump has continued to falsely claim his 2020 defeat by President Joe Biden was the result of fraud.
The lawsuit alleges Clinton and others made up a "false narrative" that Trump was "colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty."
One of the defendants includes Christopher Steele. The former British spy had been commissioned by Fusion GPS, a research and intelligence firm, to produce a Democratic-funded dossier on the relationship between Trump and the Kremlin.
The Steele dossier has been largely discredited since its publication, with core aspects of the material exposed as unsupported and unproven rumors.
A special counsel assigned to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia probe has charged one of Steele's sources for the dossier with lying to the FBI, and has also charged a cybersecurity lawyer who worked for Hillary Clinton's campaign with lying to the FBI during a 2016 meeting in which he relayed concerns about Alfa Bank.
In 2020, a Republican-led Senate committee concluded that Russia launched an aggressive effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump, and associates of the Republican candidate who were in regular touch with Russians throughout the campaign were eager to benefit from the help.
The Senate report purposely did not come to a final conclusion about whether there was enough evidence that Trump's campaign coordinated or colluded with Russia to sway the election to him and away from Clinton, leaving its findings open to partisan interpretation.
Trump's lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages, of at least $24 million.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
