By Ewan Palmer
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One of the attorneys behind Donald Trump's lawsuit against Hillary Clinton claiming her team attempted to rig the 2016 election in their favor was previously suspended from practicing law and wrote a fawning book about the former president.
Peter Ticktin, of the Florida-based Ticktin Law Group, is listed as the lead attorney in the case, which alleges that Clinton orchestrated an "unthinkable plot" to claim Trump colluded with Russia in order to tarnish his chances of winning the election.
The suit, filed in the District Court for the Southern District of Florida, accuses the Clinton campaign of "racketeering" and a "conspiracy to commit injurious falsehood" and is seeking $72 million in damages over what it claims was a "fraudulent scheme to discredit and delegitimize" Trump.
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As reported by legal news website Law&Crime, Ticktin, a former classmate of Trump, was suspended from practicing law in 2009 after being found to have engaged in professional misconduct by the Florida Bar Association.
According to the Bar complaint, Ticktin was representing businessman Paul Johnson. In 2009, while knowing Johnson was facing criminal charges, the pair entered an agreement in which Ticktin replaced Johnson as CEO of one of his companies. Ticktin then continued to do legal work for both Johnson and the company.
Among the complaints against Tictkin was that after Johnson was arrested on suspicion of defrauding investors out of $20 million, he "actively worked against Johnson's ownership interests'" even while his client was in custody.
Suspension and Investigation
The Sun Sentinel reported in 2010 that Ticktin was suspended another time over his actions as a lawyer, and that he was also investigated over allegations he allowed under pressure homeowners to take out second mortgages in order to pay his legal fees.
Records show that Ticktin is currently in good standing and has had no disciplinary issues for the last 10 years, Law&Crime reported.
In 2020, Ticktin published a book entitled: What Makes Trump Tick: My Years with Donald Trump from New York Military Academy to the Present.
According to the description, the book says there is "no better person" to ask what makes Trump "tick" than Ticktin, due to his time as Trump's former platoon sergeant who ran Company A for him at the New York Military Academy.
The book also described why Ticktin "always has and always will stand behind 45."
Case Against Clinton
A number of legal experts have dismissed Ticktin's suit, which was filed more than five years after Trump beat Clinton in the 2016 election.
Laurence Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb university professor emeritus of constitutional law at Harvard University, described it as an "absurd" lawsuit by an "absurdly litigious former president who has only himself to blame for being compromised by Putin and thus looking like he is compromised by Russia."
Jeff Grell, a lawyer who specializes in racketeering cases, also noted that the suit may have been filed too late.
Speaking to Reuters, Grell said civil racketeering claims have a four-year statute of limitations, although there can be dispute about when the time period begins.
In a very brief response, Clinton spokesperson Nick Merrill told Newsweek that the suit was "nonsense."
Responding to the criticism from legal experts, Ticktin told Newsweek that they appear to have not read the full complaint.
"I don't blame them as it is 108 pages, but the RICO claims are based on the criminal activity including theft of trade secrets and obstruction of justice, which is not the same as the counts based on the injurious falsehoods which were spewed and spread by some of the defendants," Ticktin said.
"The underlying facts are inextricably intertwined, but the RICO counts are based on criminal activity by the actors. An expert should have known this.
"Also the harm done was not 'to make him look compromised by Russia,' but rather to make him look and be called by the media a Russian asset. He was accused of colluding with Russia to fix the 2016 presidential election."
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