Letitia James, Donald Trump

Former President Donald Trump has withdrawn his lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James.

The withdrawal came in a brief document filed Friday morning with U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks.

Middlebrooks had warned Trump’s legal team the day before that the lawsuit appeared to verge on frivolous.

Trump’s lawsuit against the Attorney General had sought to shield Trump’s revocable trust from James, who has an ongoing $250 million civil suit that alleges fraudulent conduct at the Trump Organization. James has accused Trump and his family members of “grossly” inflating the former president’s net worth by billions of dollars and of cheating lenders and others with false and misleading financial statements.
Trump, who has denied the allegations, has called the investigation by James, a politically motivated “witch hunt.”

On Thursday, Middlebrooks ordered Trump and his attorney Alina Habba to pay fines of nearly $1 million after determining that Trump’s 2022 lawsuit against Hillary Clinton was frivolous litigation meant only to “seek revenge.”

Trump had sued Clinton in March 2022, for allegedly “acting in concert” with top FBI leadership to invent what became known as the Russia investigation into interference in the 2016 election. Trump had argued that the Russia probe was “prolonged and exacerbated by the presence of a small faction of Clinton loyalists who were well-positioned within the Department of Justice.” Middlebrooks dismissed the lawsuit this past September.

In his Thursday opinion, the judge also cautioned Trump’s attorneys that they could face sanctions over their lawsuit against James.

In the opinion, Middlebrooks called Trump “a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries.”