Trump Sues Clinton, DNC for 'Rigging' 2016 Election and Claims He 'Colluded' With Russia

The former television producer and beauty pageant owner spent much of his four years in office golfing and dodging claims that he was a Russian 'Manchurian candidate', even as the allegations persisted following a US special counsel investigation in 2019 found that there was no "direct evidence" that he and his staff had engaged in any wrongdoing.

Former US President Donald Trump has filed another lawsuit, this time against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and other senior Democrats, alleging that they rigged the 2016 US presidential election, and sought to tie his campaign to the Kremlin.

"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," Trump's legal team said in a federal court filing in Florida on Thursday said.

"The actions taken in furtherance of their scheme - falsifying evidence, deceiving law enforcement, and exploiting access to highly-sensitive data sources - are so outrageous, subversive and incendiary that even the events of Watergate pale in comparison," Trump's lawyers allege.

The former one-term US president in his latest legal gambit accuses Clinton, the DNC and others of "racketeering" and a "conspiracy to commit injurious falsehood," among other allegations.

The lawsuit follows an indictment of Clinton 2016 campaign staffer Michael Sussman last fall on one felony count of lying to the FBI about the so-called Russiagate - a conspiracy theory suggesting that Trump is a puppet of the Kremlin. Sussman was charged by US Special Counsel John Durham, who was tapped by one of Trump's five attorneys general, Bill Barr, to investigate crimes committed under the Russiagate umbrella. Durham's work has been allowed to continue under Biden-appointed AG Merrick Garland.

Sussman's indictment followed a guilty plea from FBI agent Kevin Clinesmith for lying to a FISA court and submitting a digitally-manipulated email to justify an FBI snooping campaign against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

In a court filing last month, the Durham probe accused Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign of paying for opposition research that linked Trump to Russia. The campaign lawyer was also accused of enlisting a tech executive to "mine" internet data from locations including Trump Tower and the White House to "establish an 'inference' and 'narrative' linking then-candidate Trump" to the Kremlin.

Clinton dismissed the Durham investigation's allegations as "conspiracy theory."

"They've been coming after me again...It's fine, the more trouble Trump gets into, the wilder the charges and conspiracy theories about me seem to get, so now his accountants have fired him and investigations draw closer to him," she said.

Trump responded by saying that Clinton was "one of the most corrupt politicians to ever run for president."

Clinton, Trump complained, "can break into the White House, my apartment, buildings I own, and my campaign - in other words, she can spy on a presidential candidate and ultimately, the president of the United States - and the now totally discredited fake news media does everything they can not to talk about it."

Trump called the Durham probe "indisputable evidence" of criminal wrongdoing on Clinton's part, and suggested that her actions constituted "treason."

Last month, one of five Trump-appointed national intelligence directors, John Ratcliffe, said he would like to see "quite a few more indictments" coming out of the Durham investigation.

Trump spent nearly three of his four years in office golfing and dismissing allegations by Democrats and media that he was colluding with the Kremlin. In April 2019, US Special Counsel Robert Mueller found that there was no "direct evidence" that Trump and his campaign had colluded with the Kremlin. The Mueller probe also revealed that previously-alleged widespread Russian attempts to meddle in the 2016 race consisted primarily of internet troll farms on Facebook and other social media whose impact on the election outcome was negligible.