Former President Donald Trump has now filed a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and is accusing her of being the mastermind of a plot to falsely make Trump look like Russian President Vladimir Putin's puppet.
In the lawsuit, which was flagged by Reuters legal reporter Jan Wolfe, Trump alleges Clinton engaged in an "unthinkable plot" to make it appear as though he was colluding with Putin to undermine her candidacy and get elected president.
"Under the guise of ‘opposition research,’ ‘data analytics,’ and other political stratagems, the Defendants nefariously sought to sway the public’s trust," the lawsuit states. "They worked together with a single, self-serving purpose: to vilify Donald J. Trump. Indeed, their far-reaching conspiracy was designed to cripple Trump’s bid for presidency by fabricating a scandal that would be used to trigger an unfounded federal investigation and ignite a media frenzy."
IN OTHER NEWS: GOP’s Marsha Blackburn gets chewed out for risking child abuse victims' privacy to smear Judge Jackson
In fact, there were many reasons to suspect that Trump may have been working with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign.
In the first place, Trump's son, his son-in-law, and campaign manager in June 2016 all met with a Russian agent who had promised them dirt on Clinton.
Additionally, Trump openly encouraged Russia to release emails that he believed the country had hacked from her private email server.
When Russia did start releasing leaked Clinton campaign emails through the WikiLeaks website, Trump was eager to promote them.
Additionally, throughout the campaign, Trump ally Roger Stone boasted of working with WikiLeaks to obtain Clinton emails -- and Stone even went so far as to acknowledge that Russia was the one leaking them.
In fact, the Trump campaign's multiple contacts with Russians in 2016 were so alarming that Trump's own deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was worried the then-president was compromised by Russia and ordered special counsel Robert Mueller to conduct an investigation into the matter.