Can Trump Win His Lawsuit Against Hillary Clinton And The DNC For Their Russia Collusion Lies?

Former President Trump’s lawyers allege a total of 16 separate counts, ranging from racketeering claims to state tort claims.

Last week, former President Donald Trump filed a sprawling lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and the other main players responsible for the Russia collusion hoax. Here’s your lawsplainer for Trump v. Clinton, et. al.

First, the Facts

The 103-page complaint filed in a Florida federal court on Thursday begins with a synopsis of the Democratic plot to frame Trump as a Russian asset, spurring the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into his presidential campaign and later his administration. Among other things, the lawsuit highlights the Clinton campaign’s hiring of Perkins Coie, alleging the law firm “was tasked with spearheading the scheme to find — or fabricate — proof of a sinister link between Donald J. Trump and Russia.”

According to the lawsuit, Perkins Coie lawyers Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann enlisted others, including the investigative firm of Fusion GPS and its co-founders, Peter Fritsch and Glenn Simpson, and “Neustar, Inc., an information technology company, and one of its top executives, Rodney Joffe.” The complaint then detailed Fusion GPS’s hiring of Christopher Steele, the principal and founder of Orbis Ltd., and Steele’s use of Igor Danchenko as a primary sub-source for the fraudulent Steele dossier that the defendants fed to the FBI and the media to craft the Russia-collusion narrative.

Simultaneously, Joffe and others exploited “their access to non-public data in search of a secret ‘back channel’ connection between Trump Tower and Alfa Bank,” the complaint alleged, but, according to the complaint, after discovering “no such channel existed, the defendants resorted to truly subversive measures hacking servers at Trump Tower, Trump’s private apartment, and, most alarmingly, the White House.” “This ill-gotten data was then manipulated to create a misleading ‘inference’” of Russia collusion,” the complaint charged. That data was then provided to the FBI and CIA, as well as peddled to the media.

In turn, the complaint continued, what Trump called a “small faction of Clinton loyalists” in the Department of Justice and FBI, including James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith, and Bruce Ohr, allegedly abused their authority by, among other things, obtaining the illegal FISA warrant to spy on former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page and to trigger the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Together, these schemes caused Trump to incur upward of $24 million to defend against the false charges Clinton and her cronies concocted, the lawsuit alleged as damages.

This summary represents a fraction of the details included in the complaint — and an even smaller sliver of the totality of the facts of SpyGate — but it sets the stage sufficiently to understand the theories Trump’s legal team present: Trump’s lawyers allege a total of 16 separate counts, ranging from RICO claims to state law tort claims.

1. RICO and RICO Conspiracy

In Count I of the complaint, Trump sues Clinton, the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, Perkins Coie, and lawyers Elias and Sussmann under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, better known as “RICO.” While racketeering, as defined in the statute, constitutes a federal crime, in passing RICO Congress also created a “civil right of action,” meaning those harmed by violations of RICO could sue for damages civilly.

To state a civil RICO claim, a plaintiff such as Trump must allege four elements: (1) conduct (2) of an enterprise (3) through a pattern (4) of racketeering activity. To satisfy the “pattern of racketeering activity element,” a plaintiff must allege: “(1) that defendants committed two or more predicate acts within a ten-year time span; (2) the predicate acts were related to one another; and (3) the predicate acts demonstrate criminal conduct of a continuing nature.”

In his complaint, Trump alleged Clinton, her campaign, the DNC, Perkins Coie, Elias, and Sussmann constituted an “enterprise” within the meaning of the statute. Whether this group, coming together to push the Russia collusion hoax, qualifies as a RICO enterprise presents an interesting question, but one ultimately irrelevant, as will soon be seen, given the underlying predicate acts Trump alleges.

Specifically, Trump alleges two possible “predicate acts” or underlying crimes, the defendants allegedly committed, which his legal team then argues establishes a RICO violation. First, the complaint alleges that...

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