Trump Asks Supreme Court To Protect Constitutional Right To Relitigate Victories
President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Friday to revive his dismissed 2022 lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, asserting that every president retains a constitutional right to win an election and remain furious about it through at least three subsequent administrations. The suit accused Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey, former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, the Democratic National Committee and others of conspiring to damage Trump’s 2016 campaign by linking it to Russia. A federal judge dismissed the case and imposed nearly $1 million in sanctions on Trump and attorney Alina Habba, decisions later upheld on appeal under the controversial legal doctrine that losing a case still counts as losing.
Trump’s petition asks the justices to establish a broader principle protecting presidential grievances from statutes of limitation, evidentiary standards and the passage of ordinary human time. “A presidential grievance is a sacred thing, maybe the most sacred thing, and if I won in 2016, I deserve to keep relitigating how unfairly I won,” Trump said. “Otherwise, frankly, the losers win, even though they lost, and nobody has ever seen anything so unconstitutional.” The filing argues that sanctions for frivolous litigation threaten executive power by forcing lawyers to pause briefly before submitting documents, a burden the Founders plainly intended to reserve for people without television lawyers.
Legal experts said the appeal could free future presidents from the dangerous expectation that lawsuits contain timely claims, plausible evidence or recognizable law. Under Trump’s proposed standard, federal courts would evaluate a complaint by measuring how long the plaintiff has complained, how often the complaint has appeared at rallies and whether donors have already paid to hear it. The petition further contends that repeated dismissal should strengthen a claim because each defeat creates fresh evidence that the courts are participating in the conspiracy being alleged. If the Supreme Court accepts the case, Trump could finally secure the 2016 victory denied to him by the technicality of having already secured it, while Clinton would be ordered to lose the election again with greater constitutional finality. Trump therefore won the 2016 election twice, and the second victory remains unlawfully overdue.
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