Donald Middlebrooks, a judge appointed to the District Court for the Southern District of Florida in January 1997, has slapped the taste of the mouths of Donald Trump and his attorneys. Specifically, he imposed sanctions and fines on them for bringing weak-ass litigation into his courtroom.

Trump lawyers, Alina Habba, Michael T. Madaio, Peter Ticktin and Jamie Alan Sasson, were assessed $50,000 penalties, plus $16,000 to cover the legal fees paid by one of the defendants. In a later ruling, Judge Middlebrooks imposed additional sanctions of $937,989.39 on Trump and his lead law firm in the litigation, Habba Madaio & Associates.

The case in question, Donald J.  Trump v. Hillary R. Clinton, et al., was dismissed back in September, with Middlebrooks writing that the complaint “is not attempting to seek redress for any legal harm; instead, [Trump] is seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him.” Basically, Trump was attempting to sue everyone who he thought had anything to do with pushing the idea that he illegally conspired with Russia during his 2016 presidential campaign.

Middlebrooks wasn’t having it. Rather, he ruled on Thursday that Trump’s lawsuit was sanctionable because it was “brought in bad faith for an improper purpose” and had “needlessly harmed” 31 individuals and organizations, including the Democratic National Committee, “in order to dishonestly advance a political narrative.” He then added, “Frivolous lawsuits should not be used as a vehicle for fundraising or fodder for rallies or social media.”

As fortune would have it, Trump also drew Middlebrooks as the judge in a separate case he brought in Florida against New York Attorney General Letitia James. James is suing Trump for business fraud in New York, but Middlebrooks has preliminarily observed that Trump’s countersuit appears “vexatious and frivolous.” He referred to it the suit while issuing his sanctions in the Clinton case.

Middlebrooks’ order cited how Trump has responded in court in New York to James’ years-long civil investigation of his company, the Trump Organization, as one of the multiple examples of “a pattern of abuse of the courts” by the Republican former president.

“Mr. Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries,” the judge wrote.

“He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer.”

Having felt Middlebrooks’ wrath in the Clinton case and given his strongly negative feelings about the James case, Trump’s lawyers abruptly dropped the James case on Friday.

Former President Donald Trump on Friday morning voluntarily dropped a longshot federal lawsuit in Florida against New York’s attorney general — a day after the same judge in the case sanctioned him and his lawyer nearly $1 million for filing another, “frivolous” lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and many other defendants.

By dropping the case, they may have avoided another million dollars of fines. Still, it will be interesting to see if these lawyers continue to represent the disgraced ex-president. It’s doing nothing good for their professional reputations, and I’m not even sure it’s lucrative considering Trump’s propensity to stiff his attorneys and the fines they incur when doing his unhinged bidding.

I take comfort in seeing that judicial branch of government continually treat Trump’s lies as complete bunk that deserve the harshest penalties when presented as the truth in court. It’s one of our last lines of defense against complete nihilism, and I hope it holds.