As the myriad Trump/Russia collusion investigations continue to come up empty, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) — which started the ball rolling by helping the Clinton campaign in financing the spurious Trump “dossier” — filed a lawsuit Friday against the Trump campaign, WikiLeaks, and Russia, claiming they colluded to disrupt the 2016 presidential election.
The civil action is a sure sign that the DNC finally knows what most reasonable people have known for months: The multiple investigations into Trump/Russia collusion are a collection of wild goose chases and will continue to fail to prove collusion.
This move by the DNC is such a blatantly desperate attempt to gain attention that even Paul Callan, a legal analyst for CNN (which news outlet can never be accused of beng either pro-Trump or anti-DNC) called it a “publicity stunt” to get information and said it will likely be “tossed out of court eventually.”
WikiLeaks agreed on both points, tweeting Friday that the “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 far as the lawsuit’s chances in court, WikiLeaks’ tweet went on to say, “As an accurate publisher of newsworthy information, @WikiLeaks is constitutionally protected from such suits.”
And it’s not just a CNN analyst and WikiLeaks that say the lawsuit is nonsense. A Democrat congresswoman from California, Representative Jackie Speier, says so, too, calling the lawsuit a “side-bar” that is “not in the interest of the American people.” Her remarks were made in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. The liberal Left-coast politician, who endorsed Clinton in 2016, went on to say that she is “not very supportive” of the legal tactic which she called an “ill-conceived idea.”
In essence, the multi-million-dollar suit charges that Trump campaign officials and the Russian government conspired against Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton by hacking DNC and Clinton campaign e-mails which were then published by WikiLeaks.
In a press release coinciding with the filing of the suit in a Manhattan federal district court Friday, DNC Chairman Tom Perez said “The Russian government notified the Trump campaign in advance that it had stolen Democratic emails and other information about the Democratic Party that it was seeking to use in support of Trump’s candidacy,” adding, “Rather than reporting Russia’s offer to meddle in a U.S. election, the Trump campaign welcomed Russia’s help.”
The press release — which certainly was designed to “generate some headlines” — went on to say, ”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,” and “This constituted an act of unprecedented treachery: the campaign of a nominee for President of the United States in league with a hostile foreign power to bolster its own chance to win the presidency.”
It is noteworthy that the filing of this suit seems to indicate that Clinton and the DNC realize that the myriad Trump/Russia collusion investigations are crumbling under their own bloated weight. If there was any real chance of those probes finding evidence of Trump/Russia collusion, the DNC would not need to grasp at straws by launching this suit.
They look desperate because they are desperate.
Trump Campaign Manager Brad Parscale asserted pretty much that same sentiment in a statement about the lawsuit, saying, “This is a sham lawsuit about a bogus Russian collusion claim filed by a desperate, dysfunctional, and nearly insolvent Democratic Party.” He added, “With the Democrats’ conspiracy theories against the President’s campaign evaporating as quickly as the failing DNC’s fundraising, they’ve sunk to a new low to raise money, especially among small donors who have abandoned them.”
The suit makes 11 charges against the defendants, including computer fraud and conspiracy. This is typical Clintonism. Remember when Hillary’s husband was impeached for perjuring himself in a sworn civil deposition related to his sexual abuse of women under his control? Hillary trotted out the same excuses then, referring to the investigation and Bill’s impeachment as a “vast Right-wing conspiracy.” It appears that in the past 20 years, Hillary has not learned the value of personal responsibility — it is always someone else’s fault.
According to the Washington Post:
Nick Akerman, a former Watergate prosecutor who specializes in computer-fraud cases, said he thought the Democrats’ suit had merit and, despite predictions from Trump-allied lawyers, was unlikely to go away anytime soon.
“There is no way it’s going to be dismissed,” said Akerman, a partner in the New York office of the Dorsey & Whitney law firm. “At least not on the computer-fraud part of the case, which is really the heart of it. The Democrats have every right to bring this suit as they are aggrieved. My question is: What took them so long?
Let’s take a minute and unpack that. First, “what took them so long” is obvious: the vain hope that the Mueller probe or one of the other collusion investigations would pull a rabbit out of a hat. Now that it is painfully obvious that isn’t going to happen, it’s time to try this. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Second (and on this point, Akerman is correct), the computer fraud part of the case is at the heart of this whole thing. And that is another Achilles heel for the DNC — because there is a conspicuous lack of anything resembling evidence that Russia wasWikiLeaks’ source for the DNC and Clinton campaign e-mails.
In fact, as The New American reported Friday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claims to have “physical proof” that Russia was not the source. There is one snag, though. Assange is in exile in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and in exchange for that proof wants a guarantee that he will not arrested and extradited to the United States to face espionage charges if he leaves the embassy. Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) — who visited Assange last August — has said that he cannot speak to the president about that offer because “any discussion with Trump and [Rohrabacher] that mentions Russia will be used as an excuse by” Special Counsel Robert Mueller “to just quadruple all the areas of investigation into [Rohrabacher] and into Trump.”
Right now, it is a Catch-22 that protects the DNC and Clinton campaign by keeping the one definitive piece of evidence that would decimate the claim (which is really the heart of” the lawsuit and the Mueller probe) from seeing the light of day. If that deal is ever able to be made, the fraudulent claims of the DNC and Clinton campaign will be laid bare.
For his part, President Trump called the lawsuit “good news” since discovery works both ways. Not only would the DNC gain access to Trump campaign records and files if the case isn’t strangled in its cradle, but the Trump campaign — as part of mounting a defense — would, in turn, gain access to the records and files of the DNC and Clinton campaign.
Photo of the lawsuit filed by the DNC: AP Images
