The Democratic National Committee’s multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the Trump campaign, the Russian government, and WikiLeaks on Friday was met with fanfare not only from the Democratic front, but also from one of the main defendants.
The legal offensive alleges a conspiracy between the trio to disrupt the 2016 presidential campaign in order to get Donald Trump elected. The DNC’s complaint was filed in a federal district court in Manhattan, N.Y.
“During the 2016 presidential campaign, Russia launched an all-out assault on our democracy, and it found a willing and active partner in Donald Trump’s campaign,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez blared.
And yet, when Trump got wind of the lawsuit, he embraced it as “good news.”
“Just heard the Campaign was sued by the Obstructionist Democrats. This can be good news in that we will now counter for the DNC Server that they refused to give to the FBI, the Debbie Wasserman Schultz Servers and Documents held by the Pakistani mystery man and Clinton Emails,” he tweeted late Friday.
Trump’s tweet redirected attention to a scandal that involved Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., who resigned as chair of the DNC following the leak of thousands of controversial DNC emails, some of which showed her efforts to help Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary process. Trump also references Wasserman Schultz’s former IT staffer who was arrested last year by federal officials in July as he was attempting to flee the country to Pakistan amid the bank fraud scandal.
Among the things the Trump team hopes to discover from the legal battle, according to a list sent out by Brad Parscale, campaign manager of Trump’s re-election campaign, is how the DNC contributed to the infamous “Trump dossier,” which contains salacious and unverified claims about Trump’s ties to Russia. The dossier was written by ex-British spy Christopher Steele and, according to the House Intelligence Committee’s FISA abuses memo, was used repeatedly by the government to help gain the authority to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
The Trump team also wants to see if there is any evidence of collusion — on the Democratic side — with the news media.
“There is a great deal the American public wants to know about the corruption of the Democrats, their collusion to influence the 2016 presidential election, and their role in prompting a scam investigation of the Trump Campaign,” Parscale said in a statement. “While this lawsuit is frivolous and will be dismissed, if the case goes forward, the DNC has created an opportunity for us to take aggressive discovery into their claims of ‘damages’ and uncover their acts of corruption for the American people.”
The lawsuit wasn’t fully embraced by everyone in the Democratic Party, and was met with some skepticism in the media as well.
Rep. Jackie Speier, a Democrat from California, panned the lawsuit as being an “ill-conceived idea” that is “not in the interest of the American people.”
CNN political analyst Gloria Borger called it “a 100 percent stunt” and “just a way to raise money.”
That point former DNC chairwoman Donna Brazile “strongly” disputed.
“Strongly disagree with my former colleagues at CNN. Why is being hacked a stunt? What if senior Trump officials knew about the hacking & didn’t report it? What are we doing now to protect future American elections?” she tweeted, adding, “This is no stunt!”
Brazile, who took over the DNC temporarily after Wasserman Schultz’s exit in 2016, further made her case saying the lawsuit wasn’t about re-litigating the past, but important for protecting future elections.
“Once again, some ppl will dismiss the DNC’s lawsuit in the same manner they dismissed the 2016 hacking or election interference in real time. Stopping sleeping at the switch. Russia deliberately hacked our democracy!” she tweeted. “This is not simply about the past, but also future elections.”
The lawsuit mentions a wide range of former Trump campaign associates, including George Papadopoulos, whose case The New York Times revealed was reported to U.S. authorities by foreign intelligence agents and prompted the federal investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Asked to comment on being a defendant, Papadopoulos’ lawyers declined to comment because he is still cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller due to his plea deal. He pleaded guilty last year to making false statements to the FBI.
Also named as defendants are former Trump campaign adviser Paul Manafort and longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone.
“This lawsuit is such garbage,” Stone said in a statement posted to Instagram.
WikiLeaks, which leaked hacked emails from the DNC and top Democratic officials in the summer of 2016, was singled out by members of the U.S. intelligence community in a January 2017 report, which said the group was being used by Russian intelligence. The group denies the association, and on Friday defiantly tweeted it was “immune” to the lawsuit and described it as a plot to gin up media attention before the 2018 midterms.
“DNC already has a moribund publicity lawsuit which the press has became bored of–hence the need to refile it as a ‘new’ suit before mid-terms. As an accurate publisher of newsworthy information @WikiLeaks is constitutionally protected from such suits,” WikiLeaks said in a tweeted statement.
Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, and son, Donald Trump Jr., are also listed as defendants.
Presiding over the case will be Judge John Koeltl, a Clinton appointee.
This was met with particular glee by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who on her show reveled over the fact that Koeltl did some work decades ago as an assistant special prosecutor in the Watergate scandal, which involved a break in at the DNC headquarters.
“In this news today history isn’t even just rhyming anymore — history is full on plagiarizing at this point,” she said with a smile.
