Trump wants the judge overseeing his RICO case against Hillary Clinton to recuse himself because he was appointed by Bill Clinton

• Trump has asked the judge overseeing his RICO case against Hillary Clinton to recuse himself.
• Trump's lawyers said the judge should step aside because he was appointed by Bill Clinton.

Former President Donald Trump has asked for the judge overseeing his RICO case against Hillary Clinton to be disqualified because he was appointed by then President Bill Clinton.

Trump sued Hillary Clinton last month, accusing her — and several other defendants linked to her 2016 campaign, the Democratic Party, the DOJ, and the FBI — of carrying out an "unthinkable plot" to tie his 2016 campaign to the Russian government.

The lawsuit was filed in the Southern District of Florida, where Trump lives. Judge Donald Middlebrooks, who Bill Clinton appointed to the court in 1997, was assigned to oversee the case.

"Due to the fact that the Defendant, HILLARY CLINTON is being sued by her former opponent for the United States Presidency, an election that she lost, regarding serious allegations on her part, as well as her allies, of engaging in fraudulent and unlawful activities against the Plaintiff, and because her husband nominated Judge Middlebrooks to the Federal Bench, there exists a reasonable basis that Judge Middlebrooks' impartiality will be questioned," Trump's attorneys said in a filing Monday.

"Due to the fact that Judge Middlebrooks has a relationship to the Defendant, HILLARY CLINTON's husband, by way of his nomination as Judge to this Court, this amounts to prejudice so virulent or pervasive as to constitute bias against a party," they continued.

Trump's lawyers did not present any examples of Middlebrooks demonstrating "virulent" prejudice against Trump or other Republicans, or favoring Democrats. They also did not say how they would react if a Trump-appointed judge were assigned the case.

As Politico reported, it's exceedingly rare for courts to grant motions seeking the recusal of judges based on the political party of the president who nominated them.

Trump's filing went on to say that he is "unaware of the exact extent of the relationship between Judge Middlebrooks and the Defendant, HILLARY CLINTON, herself, who acted as First Lady of the United States, during the time of the Judge's nomination to Federal Court Judge."

"The Plaintiff is also unaware if the Judge has current [sic] relationship with either the Defendant, HILLARY CLINTON, or her husband, and how far back the relationship has existed," it continued.

Trump's sweeping racketeering lawsuit against Clinton and the other defendants accused them of conspiring to fabricate evidence tying him to "a hostile foreign sovereignty."

It dismissed any "contrived Trump-Russia link." It also recycled other claims Trump has made about former special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign and the 2016 election.

Specifically, it said Mueller exonerated "Donald Trump and his campaign with his finding that there was no evidence of collusion with Russia." And it said the "Mueller Report demonstrated that, after a two-year long investigation coming on the heels of a year-long FBI investigation, the Special Counsel found no evidence that Donald Trump or his campaign ever colluded with the Russian government to undermine the 2016 election."

Mueller concluded in 2019 that the Russian government interfered with the 2016 US election to damage Clinton and propel Trump to the Oval Office. But his final report specified that investigators evaluated the relevant events from "the framework of conspiracy law, not the concept of 'collusion.'"

Hillary Clinton's spokesman Nick Merrill said in an earlier statement to Insider that the lawsuit was "nonsense."