Left: Then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, right, speaks as then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump listens during the second presidential debate in St. Louis, Oct. 9, 2016 (Rick T. Wilking/Pool via AP, File). Right: U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas answers questions during a visit to the University of Texas at Austin, in Austin, Texas, Wednesday, April 15, 2026 (AP Photo/Eric Gay).
Former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to bring a decisive end to President Donald Trump's "frivolous" civil RICO lawsuit.
Clinton's opposition filing hit the high court's docket on Friday, two weeks before the Black Friday deadline.
Trump's lawyers had twice asked for — and twice received — 30-day extensions from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas before they filed their brief.
Clinton attorney David Kendall, joined by an army of other lawyers for the erstwhile RICO defendants, found the extra time produced little of substance. He asserted it was telling that Trump lawyers "framed" the case's dismissal and roughly $1 million in sanctions as a "threat" to the presidency.
Trump "filed a shotgun amended pleading chock-full of frivolous claims—despite being on notice of numerous defects from an earlier round of motion-to-dismiss briefing" and the district court "imposed sanctions under its inherent authority," the brief said, noting the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did nothing to second-guess those rulings.
"Perhaps recognizing that such circumstances would not ordinarily warrant this Court's intervention," Clinton's brief said, "petitioners—President Donald Trump and his attorneys—attempt to frame a routine opinion disposing of a frivolous lawsuit as a threat to 'the Presidency'" with a chilling effect on Trump lawyers' advocacy.
The lawsuit broadly accused Democrats of conspiring to bankroll "an unthinkable plot" to tar the 2016 Trump campaign, cloud Trump's first term as president through "a sinister link" to Russia, and harm his business interests, with Clinton at the top of the alleged "Russiagate" RICO conspiracy.
But the case never got off the ground, and was dismissed by a federal judge who said the Florida suit was a "frivolous" and "bad faith" action that warranted $1 million in sanctions against Alina Habba, the firm Habba Madaio & Associates, and Trump himself.
Ever since, the president and his lawyers have tried — without success — to revive the lawsuit.
According to Clinton's legal team, the time has come for the justices to deliver a decisive blow and reject Trump's ask to jump-start time-barred claims on "equitable tolling" grounds.
"Equitable tolling, they argue, was warranted during Trump's first term given the burdens associated with holding presidential office. The Eleventh Circuit disagreed," the opposition brief summarized. "As a result, petitioners contend the decision below intrudes on Article II prerogatives. And the district court's sanctions order, petitioners assert, punished them for raising a novel presidential equitable-tolling argument, purportedly stymieing the development of the law."
"Neither question presented justifies review," the brief went on, emphasizing that Trump "failed to exercise reasonable diligence by waiting fourteen months after his term ended to initiate this suit."
"As a result, his complaint flunks even his own equitable-tolling theory," the filing said, noting that Trump "filed a slew of lawsuits in his personal capacity during both of his presidential terms."
Clinton also asked the Supreme Court not to disturb the "undeniably appropriate" sanctions in this case, "given the egregious nature of the 193-page amended complaint" — which "teemed with frivolous claims that lacked core elements, such as a malicious-prosecution claim without a prosecution."
"The Court should deny the petition," the brief concluded.
Trump's lawyers are hoping at least four justices will agree to rein in lower courts for "wrongly punish[ing] a President and his lawyers for defending his Article II prerogatives."
"This Court's intervention is necessary to protect the Presidency, and to prevent judicial disagreement from becoming a license to punish its advocates," the petition said.
At the district court, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks rebuffed demands to recuse himself from the matter, stating that it was irrelevant that Bill Clinton appointed him to the bench. Middlebrooks said he had "never met or spoken with Bill or Hillary Clinton."
The judge called Trump a "prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries" and the "mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process" who "cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer."
"He knew full well the impact of his actions," Middlebrooks said.