A federal judge on Wednesday rejected a request by former President Donald Trump to be removed from overseeing his lawsuit against Hillary Clinton.
Donald Middlebrooks should be removed from the federal bench because he was appointed by Bill Clinton, according to Trump's lawyers.
Due to the fact that Judge Middlebrooks has a relationship to the husband of Hillary Clinton, this amounts to prejudice so pervasive as to constitute bias against a party.
Although Clinton is not a party to the lawsuit, Middlebrooks will give the benefit of the doubt and equate the interests of the Clintons for the sake of analysis here.
The judge found that Trump's argument doesn't hold water, and that something more must be involved than my appointment to the bench twenty-five years ago by the spouse of a litigant.
He pointed out that the three cases that were cited in Trump's motion for recusal did not support his arguments.
In the first case, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that a district court judge did not exhibit bias enough to warrant recusal based on certain statements he made at trial.
Middlebrooks wrote that none of the cases discussed whether judicial appointment by a party, without more, would cause a reasonable person to suspect bias on the part of the presiding judge. The ruling emphasized that a party must demonstrate pervasive bias and prejudice in order to be disqualified.
Being appointed to the bench by a litigant does not create a perception that the judge is impartial.
It is exceedingly rare for courts to grant motions seeking the recusal of judges based on the political party of the president who nominated them.
Every federal judge is appointed by a president who is affiliated with a major political party, and therefore every federal judge could theoretically be viewed as beholden.
He said that as judges, we must all ignore politics. I have done that for the last 25 years, and this case will be no different.
Clinton and the other defendants were accused of conspiring to fabricate evidence during the 2016 campaign in order to tie him to a hostile foreign sovereignty.
It dismissed any link between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The report said that, after a two-year long investigation coming on the heels of a year-long FBI, there was no evidence of Russian interference in the election.
The Russian government interfered with the 2016 US election in order to damage Clinton and help Trump, according to the findings of the investigation. The framework of conspiracy law was evaluated by investigators in his final report.
There wasn't enough evidence to charge anyone on the Trump campaign with conspiring with Moscow. They noted that the campaign expected it to benefit from Russia's efforts.
Nick Merrill said in an earlier statement to Insider that the lawsuit was nonsense.
Charles R. Davis was a contributor.
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