A federal appeals court tossed a chance Tuesday to rehear Donald Trump’s mega-lawsuit against his perceived political enemies.Trump’s 2022 suit targeted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey (amongst others), claiming that they had participated in a broad racketeering conspiracy to create false allegations that his 2016 presidential campaign was tied to Russia. A district court dismissed the case in January 2023.But the frivolous legal attack wasn’t just struck down in court—it also netted Trump and his personal attorney, Alina Habba, a nearly $1 million sanction. In November, Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge William Pryor Jr. upheld the fine and noted that “many of Trump’s and Habba’s legal arguments were indeed frivolous,” echoing a lower court’s findings that Trump had made a “malicious prosecution claim without a prosecution” and a “trade secret claim without a trade secret.”It’s been half a year since then, and on Tuesday, the Eleventh Circuit declined another opportunity to rehear Trump’s case.Six of the 12 judges on the panel were Trump appointees. None of them sought a vote to rehear the case.The next stop on this component of Trump’s retribution campaign would be the Supreme Court, if Trump intends to push the legal case to its very end. It’s unclear how the nation’s highest judiciary would vote, though in the last handful of weeks the court has made some wildly controversial decisions related to gerrymandering and voting rights that lawmakers, political commentators, and even members of the court have argued placed Trump’s interests above the parameters of the law.
The Trump administration has sent subpoenas to dozens of hospitals across the nation over the past year, demanding access to information about children receiving gender-affirming care and the doctors treating them. Those efforts have mostly failed. At least eight separate Trump administration administrative subpoenas, which would force hospitals to release trans kids’ medical records, have […]