President Donald J. Trump on Friday asked the Supreme Court to revive his dismissed 2022 civil lawsuit accusing Hillary Clinton and others of conspiring to tie his 2016 campaign to Russia. Justice Clarence Thomas extended the deadline to October 9; Trump’s lawyers submitted the petition that day.
The 2022 Florida lawsuit (Trump v. Clinton, S.D. Fla.) named Hillary Clinton, her campaign, the DNC, Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith, and others connected to the dossier and Crossfire Hurricane.
The phony 35-page Steele dossier was opposition research funded by the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Fusion GPS hired Steele to produce it. The dossier alleged coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, along with salacious claims about Trump himself. Its assertions were later shown to be invented, incorrect, and unverifiable.
The Clinton campaign and DNC later paid FEC fines for failing to properly disclose the payments.
U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks of the Southern District of Florida, a Bill Clinton appointee, dismissed the suit in September 2022 after rejecting a motion to disqualify him. He described the complaint as a lengthy political manifesto rather than a viable legal claim and later imposed nearly $1 million in sanctions on Trump and his then-attorney Alina Habba.
The courts rejected the case in 2022 and again in 2025 on procedural grounds, mainly that it was filed too late and failed to meet the legal requirements for a RICO claim, without deciding whether the Russia story was true or false.
The mainstream media used the dossier as a nightly mouthpiece, convincing many Americans that the invented Russian collusion had occurred when, in fact, it had not. This was an attempt to discredit President Trump and his allies while rewriting the history of the 2016 election.
Figures like Adam Schiff and disgraced former California Congressman Eric Swalwell regularly appeared on cable news pushing the collusion narrative, singling out associates including myself. This was a moment when the media revealed their deep state favoritism by failing to examine the document’s weaknesses at the time, something that almost seems orchestrated given the ethical standards journalists are expected to follow.
Later investigative work by Devin Nunes and Kash Patel documented the extent of its bogus and unverified assertions.
It was the brave work of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, whose declassifications fully exposed the reckless handling of the dossier inside the Intelligence Community. Obama ordered the Intelligence Community to create an Intelligence Community Assessment they knew was false, promoting a contrived narrative with the intent of undermining the legitimacy and power of a duly elected President of the United States, Donald Trump. These releases documented how senior Obama-era officials, including CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, and DNI James Clapper, overrode explicit internal warnings from intelligence professionals that the dossier was baseless and unfit for use in assessments or surveillance.
In a July 23, 2025 statement, Gabbard stated: “Not only did CIA Director Brennan, FBI Director Comey, DNI Clapper and others include the Steele Dossier in the 2017 ICA, they overruled senior Intel officials who warned them it was fabricated and should not be used.” Declassified whistleblower accounts reinforced this, showing pressure on career officials to endorse the ICA’s flawed conclusions despite their documented objections.The records also showed that senior CIA analysts and managers privately warned the dossier was non-credible and unfit for inclusion, yet Brennan and Comey overruled them and ensured a summary appeared in the ICA’s classified annex and was referenced in the main text.
These findings aligned with Special Counsel John Durham’s May 2023 report, which criticized the FBI’s reliance on such thin evidence. The same pattern of reliance on the unverified dossier appeared earlier in the FBI’s surveillance applications, but were ignored. DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s 2019 report found 17 significant errors and omissions in the four FISA applications used to surveil Carter Page, including reliance on the uncorroborated Steele dossier and the omission of Page’s prior CIA relationship. FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith later pleaded guilty to altering an email to falsely state Page was “not a source” for another agency. Trump’s Supreme Court petition cites both Clinesmith’s guilty plea and the Inspector General’s finding of at least 17 significant errors or omissions.
In the Supreme Court petition, Trump’s lawyers argue the statute of limitations should have been paused while he was president, because pursuing the case would have taken time and energy needed for official duties. They say the lower courts wrongly rejected that argument and used it to justify the sanctions. The petition contends review is needed to protect the presidency.
The Supreme Court’s eventual ruling aside, the central claim that drove years of media coverage and official assessments, that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia, has already been substantially undermined by subsequent investigations and declassifications. The Obama Administration’s January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment was not an independent product produced with apolitical analysis. The record now includes the dossier’s Democratic funding and later FEC fines, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s declassifications on the handling of the dossier inside the Intelligence Community, the Inspector General’s documentation of 17 significant FISA errors and omissions, Clinesmith’s guilty plea, and Durham’s criticism of the FBI’s reliance on thin evidence. Follow the paper trail and you will find the media was complacent, performative, and disingenuous to the public.
