A US federal court has fined former President Donald Trump and his lawyers nearly $1 million for a "frivolous" lawsuit they had filed against ex-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Trump had claimed that Clinton engaged in a smear campaign to undermine his chances in the 2016 US election by alleging he collaborated with Moscow.

In a ruling on Thursday, Judge John Middlebrooks in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida sanctioned Trump and his attorney Alina Habba, ordering them to cover legal fees and costs to the tune of $938,000 incurred by defendants in the case.

They included Clinton, her campaign chief John Podesta, former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Orbis Business Intelligence, a company co-founded by Christopher Steele, an ex-British agent who compiled the notorious "Trump-Russia dossier."

"We are confronted with a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both fa