Former President Donald Trump’s lawsuit over the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago property could backfire, legal analysts say.
Trump is set to file a civil suit against the Department of Justice (DOJ) for $100 million in damages, which he argues he sustained as a result of the government’s search of his Palm Beach, Florida, home, according to reports. During the August 2022 raid, federal officials found classified documents in Trump’s possession a year and a half after he had left the White House.
Trump was subsequently charged with illegally retaining national security documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them, but Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case last month. The DOJ is appealing her decision.
Former federal prosecutor and elected state attorney Michael McAuliffe told Newsweek that the lawsuit would only be a “publicity stunt” and “nothing more.” And former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that she would “welcome” the lawsuit if she were at the DOJ because a civil case would mean discovery and a deposition from Trump.
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Legal expert Lisa Rubin agreed, tweeting that through the discovery process “one thing DOJ would get to find out is whether Trump himself (or any business he owns) paid his alleged $15 million in legal fees incurred in defending against the Mar-a-Lago case, or whether, for example, his leadership PAC, Save America, actually assumed those costs for him through the generosity of his donors.”
Newsweek reached out by email to Trump’s representatives for comment.
McAuliffe predicted that either the lawsuit would be dismissed or Trump would drop it when discovery begins, calling it “a predictable Trump litigation strategy.”
Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told Newsweek he expected the lawsuit to be dismissed because there’s no evidence to prove Trump’s claims that the raid was part of a “political prosecution.”
“The government asked for the return of the classified documents before they issued a subpoena, then executed a search warrant. The prosecution was the culmination of Trump ignoring the requests and subpoena and obstructing justice to prevent the lawful return of the documents,” Rahmani said.
He added that while Cannon dismissed the case, she did so because she believed DOJ special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional, not because she believed Trump was innocent.
“The government has broad immunity from civil lawsuits absent some violation of a clearly established constitutional right,” Rahmani said. “There isn’t any such violation here, so I don’t expect this lawsuit to go anywhere, like Trump’s previous frivolous lawsuit against Hillary Clinton.”
In January 2023, Trump and his attorney Alina Habba were sanctioned by a Florida judge for their lawsuit against Clinton. They were ordered to pay nearly $1 million for filing a “completely frivolous lawsuit,” which U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks said showed a “pattern of abuse of the courts” that “amounts to obstruction of justice.”
