On Wednesday, a federal appeals court dealt a significant blow to former President Donald Trump, rejecting his attempts to revive a dismissed lawsuit involving Hillary Clinton and others. The case, rooted in allegations that the 2016 election was manipulated against Trump, has been a lengthy legal pursuit.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit issued a 36-page ruling affirming both the dismissal of the lawsuit against all defendants and a substantial penalty of nearly $1 million in attorneys’ fees levied against Trump and his lawyer, Alina Habba.

The panel of three judges noted that many of Trump and Habba’s legal claims were “indeed frivolous.” The opinion was crafted by Chief U.S. Circuit Judge William Pryor, alongside U.S. Circuit Judges Embry Kidd and Andrew L. Brasher, appointees of George W. Bush, Joe Biden, and Trump, respectively.

Trump had initially filed a sweeping RICO lawsuit in March 2022, targeting Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former FBI director James Comey, and others. The suit accused them of orchestrating a “nefarious scheme” to damage and defame Trump during his first presidential campaign.

However, by September 2022, a Florida district court dismissed the lawsuit, criticizing it as a “frivolous” endeavor that lacked “substance and legal support.” The court described the filing as saturated with “length, hyperbole, and the settling of scores and grievances.”

In September 2022, the litigation was dismissed as a “frivolous” effort lacking “substance and legal support” but rife with “length, hyperbole, and the settling of scores and grievances” by a district court in Florida.

But, in the end, years of appellate life support could not save the case, despite several attempted interventions and one granted extension.

The district court determined Trump had failed to state a claim. The appellate court endorsed that analysis of the case wholeheartedly.

“[T]he district court ruled that Trump brought several frivolous claims, including a ‘malicious prosecution claim without a prosecution,’ and a ‘trade secret claim without a trade secret,’” the opinion reads. “Trump also appended seven counts to his indictment which did not allege any cause of action and which the district court found were ‘the high-water mark of shotgun pleading.’”

A shotgun pleading is a sort of disorganized filing that fails to give the opposing side fair notice of adequate claims or defense. Here, the courts are effectively saying Trump’s lawsuit was a kitchen sink-style attack on his political opponents instead of a genuine lawsuit.

And, notably, the appellate court points out: “Trump leaves all these frivolous claims behind, making a total of 11 of his 16 claims he does not appeal.” As for the five remaining claims actually being appealed, the opinion terms them “untimely and otherwise meritless.”

The president’s loss was, perhaps, presaged by the attitude expressed by the appeals court during a hearing in the case just last week.

During arguments, Pryor mockingly told Trump appellate lawyer Richard Klugh: “I can read this complaint, it’s a shotgun pleading. There’s no question about that, is there?”

While the initial dismissal was already on appeal, Trump and his attorneys “moved the district court to reconsider each order in the light of a report by Special Counsel John Durham,” which the lower court declined to do — and which was subsequently appealed as well.

The appeals court flatly rejected the idea of giving legal relevance to the report, saying Durham’s work “does not change our conclusions.”

“They tell us that the report establishes ‘that a federal investigation of the relevant conduct was ongoing during’ Trump’s first presidential term,” the opinion continues. “But the existence of an investigation was already evident at the time of—and expressly mentioned in—the amended complaint. Trump and his attorneys offer us no reason to reverse the district court.”

As for the sanctions, the appeals court echoes itself and its repeated invocation of the district judge’s findings, finding no error there.

“Trump’s attorneys filed the amended complaint in bad faith,” the opinion goes on. “Trump’s attorneys give us no reason to conclude the district court clearly erred in that finding.”

The opinion explains the upshot of the sanctions, at length:

[D]efendants jointly moved for sanctions against Trump and his counsel. The district court granted their motion. This time it issued sanctions based on its inherent authority. It described the shotgun pleadings, knowingly false factual allegations, and frivolous legal theories as evidence of bad faith. It also mentioned other “[f]rivolous lawsuits” Trump had filed to establish he had a “pattern of misusing the courts.” It calculated the fees and costs requested by defendants as slightly more than $1 million. It ruled that the amounts requested were largely reasonable, in part because the requests were “substantially discounted” from the total charged. It then considered Trump’s line-by-line objections to the hours billed and reduced certain attorneys’ hours to account for vague or block billing. It assessed a total of $937,989.39 in fees and costs. It found Trump and Habba, along with Habba’s law firm, jointly and severally liable for that amount.

“Trump and his attorneys committed sanctionable conduct,” the opinion summarizes.

The opinion, however, contains one silver lining for Trump.

While the appeals court affirmed the dismissal as to every defendant, one defendant was ultimately not nearly as lucky as the rest.

The district court dismissed the case with prejudice for every defendant; the lawsuit cannot be refiled against them. But the lower court lacked jurisdiction over one such defendant, so the dismissal with prejudice is not allowed to stand, the appeals court ruled.

The appeals court affirmed the dismissal of the case against Orbis Business Intelligence, the private intelligence company owned by former British spy Christopher Steele, just without prejudice.