Trump asks Supreme Court to look at 2016 election lawsuit against Clinton: Report

President Trump asked the Supreme Court on Friday to reopen his dismissed lawsuit against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, reviving claims that she and other political adversaries orchestrated an effort to sabotage his 2016 presidential campaign by tying it to Russia.

Trump filed the appeal after a federal judge dismissed his case and ordered the president, as well as his former attorney, Alina Habba, to pay nearly $1 million in sanctions. A federal appeals court upheld both rulings last year.

In Friday’s filing, Trump’s attorneys argued the lower courts improperly punished them for pursuing legitimate legal claims, according to Reuters.

As of late Friday night, the lawsuit appeared on the Supreme Court’s online docket system, but the page did not yet list the reported filing. The most recent document available tied to the legal challenge was a late August application requesting more time to file its appeal, which Justice Clarence Thomas approved, extending the deadline to Friday, Oct. 9.

The attorneys wrote that the decision reflected “a deeply troubling trend of federal courts using sanctions and disciplinary threats to punish the president and his lawyers for legitimate legal positions that those courts (erroneously) reject,” per Reuters.

“The court’s intervention is necessary to protect the presidency, and to prevent judicial disagreement from becoming a license to punish its advocates,” the lawyers continued.

Trump first filed the lawsuit in 2022, accusing Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey, the Democratic National Committee and others of conspiring to undermine his presidential bid by bolstering allegations that his campaign colluded with Russia.

U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks dismissed the case in September of that same year, finding Trump’s claims were legally insufficient and that some were filed too late.

Middlebrooks later sanctioned Trump and Habba, describing the lawsuit as a “two-hundred-page political manifesto” and accusing the president, who was not in office at the time of the challenge, of using the courts to advance his political grievances.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal and sanctions in 2025. The unanimous three-judge panel, which included Trump appointee Andrew Brasher, found many of lawsuit’s arguments “frivolous.”

The appeal follows Trump’s recent comments that he could have taken action against Clinton, as well as former Presidents Obama and Biden, but chose not to out of respect for the presidency.

“I could have done very bad things to Hillary Clinton. I could have done very, very bad things to Joe Biden,” Trump told reporters while discussing the possibility of facing another impeachment should Democrats regain control of Congress.