Attorneys for three Democratic National Committee hack victims urged a federal judge Thursday to allow a new investigation of possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia, alleging a “conspiracy” involving President Trump’s associates.
U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle considered the case on the first anniversary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which is looking into the same matter.
The hearing, which took place in the same building where Mueller has witnesses testify to a grand jury, lasted nearly four hours, with the judge pressing each side on complicated jurisdictional and case law issues. The hearing began with about three dozen people in the audience. Most left by the end, surprised by the duration.
The lawsuit was filed last year on behalf of three men who say their records were released by WikiLeaks. Democratic donors Eric Schoenberg and Roy Cockrum say WikiLeaks published their Social Security numbers, putting them at risk of fraud. Scott Comer, a former Democratic National Committee employee, said leaked emails outed him as gay to his grandparents and forced him out of a job with Hillary Clinton’s campaign over office gossip.
The case, brought by Protect Democracy, a government watchdog group, seeks to leverage circumstantial information into a legal discovery phase. But Trump campaign lawyer Michael Carvin pushed back hard, saying the lawsuit contains “every speculative fact” possible.
“Where is the allegation we met with WikiLeaks anywhere? … They haven’t connected it up at all,” Carvin said.
Carvin argued the men weren’t the targets of the email release, meaning the alleged conspiracy doesn’t meet the standard of laws criminalizing disclosure of private facts or political intimidation.
“There’s nothing unlawful about releasing information about the corruption at the DNC,” Carvin also argued, adding that the donor information was newsworthy because it showed “buying access to President Obama.”
Carvin said WikiLeaks, as a matter of policy, doesn’t redact personal information and questioned whether Comer was actually outed by WikiLeaks. “The only thing referring to his sexual orientation is [his job title] LGBT finance director,” he said. Carvin said there was no case law showing that revelation of office gossip constituted illegal disclosure of private facts.
In one exchange, Carvin questioned the logic of claims that the Trump campaign sought to intimidate Democratic donors, saying, “If this really were our scheme … we would have gotten this information on the Internet very early.” The judge countered: “If you are a defense attorney arguing, ‘If we were going to do this crime, we would have done it better,’ I’m not sure that’s going to carry the day.”
Oral arguments don’t always indicate how a judge will rule, but Huvelle, who was nominated by former President George H.W. Bush, expressed skepticism about whether D.C. was the appropriate jurisdiction and about the limits of the alleged conspiracy.
Huvelle said the the hacking of DNC emails, allegedly from servers in D.C., and the distribution of the content by Wikileaks were two distinct conspiracies, potentially eliminating an argument for the case to be heard in D.C.
“Their injury was complete when the emails were disseminated” in July 2016, the judge also said, repeatedly expressing skepticism about whether subsequent links between the Trump campaign and Russians were relevant. She noted someone can suffer for years from a broken neck, but that the injury ended when it was broken. “The goalpost is pretty loose. Under your definition, it would go on until today,” Huvelle said.
Ben Berwick, representing the men, argued D.C. was the proper forum for the lawsuit, in part because of two meetings where the alleged conspiracy were discussed. He argued that events following dissemination of emails was relevant, likening it to paying a conspirator for a crime months later.
Attorneys for the three plaintiffs said that proving a conspiracy was unnecessary. “This is a big conspiracy. At this stage, plaintiffs are not expected to fit all of the pieces together,” Berwick said.
In an effort to prove a conspiracy, the group wants to reach a discovery phase in the case, which also named Trump ally Roger Stone as a defendant. An attorney for Stone argued he had even less of a connection to D.C. than the campaign, and that examples of his alleged link to the conspiracy occurred outside of the time window when it occurred.
The judge did not issue a ruling from the bench and said she would like to see the emails that allegedly harmed Comer, and to receive additional case law citations, by Friday. “I gotta see the emails. I don’t want them all dumped on me either. I’m not WikiLeaks,” she said.
In filings before the hearing, the Trump campaign made clear the stakes.
“The object of this lawsuit is to launch a private investigation into the President of the United States,” the Trump campaign said. “Plaintiffs have not named the President as a defendant, but the complaint foreshadows a fishing expedition into his ‘tax returns’, ‘business relationships and financial ties’, ‘real estate projects’, conversations ‘with FBI Director Comey’, and on and on.”
The Trump campaign team noted that Protect Democracy itself advertised the case in a press release as “a vehicle for discovery of documents and evidence.”
