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Democratic Party Files Suit Alleging Russia, the Trump Campaign, and WikiLeaks Conspired To Disrupt the 2016 Election (cnbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the breaking-news dept.

The Democratic Party is suing Russia, the Trump campaign and the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks for conspiring to disrupt the 2016 presidential election. From a report: The multi-million-dollar lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court says that "In the Trump campaign, Russia found a willing and active partner in this effort" to mount "a brazen attack on American Democracy," which included Russian infiltration of the Democratic Party computer network. The Trump campaign, according to the lawsuit, "gleefully welcomed Russia's help." The suit says that "preexisting relationships with Russia and Russian oligarchs" with Trump and Trump associates "provided fertile ground for [the] Russia-Trump conspiracy." The common purpose of the scheme, according to the Democratic National Committee, was to "bolster Trump and denigrate the Democratic Party nominee," Hillary Clinton, while boosting the candidacy of Trump, "whose policies would benefit the Kremlin." Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said the party's suit "is not partisan, it's patriotic."

32 of 669 comments (clear)

  1. And hilarity ensues!!!! by Train0987 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Clinton is running again, that should be obvious to all now. This is the funniest thing I've seen in a long, LONG time!

    1. Re:And hilarity ensues!!!! by KiviPall · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Clinton is running again, that should be obvious to all now. This is the funniest thing I've seen in a long, LONG time!

      I honestly hope she will be in prison by that time. BTW, as you probably know: "Criminal Referral Issued For Comey, Clinton, Lynch And McCabe; Rosenstein Recusal Demanded" This is getting really interesting and there is hope, that those swamp creatures end up behind bars.

    2. Re:And hilarity ensues!!!! by dbialac · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Choices:

      [ ] Take responsibility for doing everything they could to stop well liked candidate Bernie Sanders from winning the primary. Take responsibility for putting up a horrible and incredibly disliked candidate.
      [ x ] Make excuses and sue the other side because they won with an equally horrible candidate.

    3. Re: And hilarity ensues!!!! by PeopleAquarium · · Score: 5, Insightful

      None of us know if they've found anything saying Trump colluded, including the Democrats. That part of the investigation isn't finished, and so they're unlikely to talk about it for fear of damaging the investigation.

      That's probably what this is about. The Dems are getting impatient too.

      The bits and pieces that have come out about the underlings who were charged (and pled guilty in some cases), do strongly imply that there is at least some evidence that something criminal has happened and that Trump was involved.

      This lawsuit is likely a fishing expedition by the dems, who want access to whatever Mueller is sitting on. The lawsuit will give them a way to gain access to more of Mueller's intel.

    4. Re:And hilarity ensues!!!! by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I'm wondering why they haven't sued themselves for the underhanded things the Clinton campaign and the upper echelons of the Democrat party did to poor old Bernie Sanders, and basically rigged their primaries for Hillary.

      Seems THAT was the major impediment to the Dem party and it was from within, not external sources.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    5. Re: And hilarity ensues!!!! by Nidi62 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Their Mueller investigation must truly be going poorly. It's been over a year and they haven't found anything that says Trump colluded. They've found wrong doing by various underlings

      If a significant portion of the people you personally selected (by your own claims!) to work under you/advise you/etc have been caught doing something illegal, then you are either complicit in that illegal activity or incapable of proper leadership and oversight. Both of which should be indicators that you really shouldn't be running a country.

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    6. Re: And hilarity ensues!!!! by dlkwnt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's been over a year and they haven't found anything that says Trump colluded.

      1. The investigation is still ongoing, so to say they haven't found anything is stupid. They haven't announced that they're bringing charges, which is a totally different thing.
      2. The investigation involves classified information so the idea that you or I or anyone in the public sphere knows what the have and have not found is laughable at best.
      3. Watergate took over 2 years, the Ken Starr investigation took like 6 years, some Mafia prosecutions took decades. The investigation will end when it's finished following all the evidence. The only thing the fact that it's been a year tells us is that there's a lot of evidence to deal with.

    7. Re: And hilarity ensues!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Getting a warrant for Cohen about a pornstar payment really is far and away removed from "russian collusion".

    8. Re: And hilarity ensues!!!! by pollarda · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There are so many people pissed at Trump that it is hard to believe that if they had found something, someone wouldn't have found a way to leak it. People are using leaks as weapons and even leaking false information for the same end. The fact that there aren't any detailed leaks is telling....

    9. Re:And hilarity ensues!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Bernie would have won and the United States of America as well as the rest of the world would have been better for it.

      There's nothing more delusional and disgusting in American politics than a true Clinton supporter.

    10. Re:And hilarity ensues!!!! by jythie · · Score: 2, Insightful

      'rigged' is probably too strong a word. The DNC gave certain advantages to the Clinton campaign, which one would expect when you have a candidate that is deeply entwined with an institution as opposed to an outsider with few personal or political connections to the group. But 'rigged' gives a false impression that there was cheating or tampering involved, which there wasn't.

    11. Re:And hilarity ensues!!!! by jythie · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I am saying this as someone who voted for Sanders, but to say that Sanders was well liked while Clinton was unpopular just isn't the case. Clinton got more support from the DNC, but she as still quite popular with Democrats and Sanders had a lot of detractors. At the end of the day, the primary was won by more people liking Clinton than Sanders. One can argue that the DNC used its position to influence who people liked and who they did not, but we were still in the minority.

    12. Re: And hilarity ensues!!!! by Train0987 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, it's the same "investigation" which has no morphed into a full-blown witch-hunt determined to overthrow an elected President by any means necessary. Now it turns out there was never any basis for a Mueller in the first place.

      Yes, Trump is a circus clown.

      But that circus clown has inadvertently ripped the mask off the thoroughly corrupt establishment. We should all be thanking him for exposing them for what they are.

    13. Re:And hilarity ensues!!!! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1, Insightful

      You'd think the government would know who was a citizen making that irrelevant

      The government does not know who is a citizen. There is no centralized "list of citizens". Most births (but not all) are recorded by county governments, but until recently those births were not reported to state or federal levels.

      I live in California. My "proof of citizenship" is a piece of paper in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet in a county courthouse 2500 miles away, where I was born.

    14. Re:And hilarity ensues!!!! by smugfunt · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Rigged it was, at least in New York:
      A catalogue of SNAFUs
      An admission of guilt

    15. Re:And hilarity ensues!!!! by apoc.famine · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How did you determine that the Mueller investigation is a farce? What evidence do you have that the rest of us don't have?

      From my point of view, I see a couple of convictions and some guilty pleas, and a bunch of people freaking out that their crimes might be uncovered next. That's rather the opposite of a farce. If anything, it looks like a reasonable and fairly well-run investigation. Given how long they usually take, this one seems to be especially fruitful very quickly.

      Again, that seems to be the opposite of a farce. More like shooting fish in a barrel.

      --
      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
    16. Re:And hilarity ensues!!!! by Archtech · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You are quite right: the Democratic Party is free to make its own rules.

      What they cannot do is to claim truthfully that their processes are "democratic" (with a small "d"). As you have just explained so clearly, it is straightforwardly plutocratic. In other words, it is money that exerts power, not the votes of individual citizens.

      And of course that implies that the Democratic Party's very name is a deliberate, stinking lie.

      --
      I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
    17. Re: And hilarity ensues!!!! by quantaman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Which begs the obvious question, do you have the slightest bit of credible evidence that non U.S. Citizens voting in significant numbers is a problem?

      That's a cute bit of sleight of hand: allow people to vote without letting anyone ask them for proof of citizenship, then complain that there's no proof that non-citizens are voting.

      Actually no.

      IF wide scale in-person voter impersonation were happening then requiring IDs would be the solution.

      BUT, if wide scale in-person voter impersonation were happening we'd have a lot of other evidence that it were happening.

      The organizers would occasionally be ratted out by their co-conspirators or people they tried to recruit. Impersonators would occasionally try to impersonate a person the volunteer recognized, and be quickly apprehended. Illegal aliens arrested for deportation would offer to rat out the illegal voting organizers in exchange for a reprieve. You'd get routine instances of legal voters going to the polls and finding out they'd voted elsewhere.

      You realize how hard it is to carry out a conspiracy involving a half-dozen people? To influence a national election you need at least tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of people. That it's actually happening and the evidence isn't so overwhelming as to be common knowledge just isn't realistic.

      --
      I stole this Sig
  2. The democratic party did itself in by QuesarVII · · Score: 4, Insightful

    By actively preventing Bernie from getting the democratic nomination they made a Trump victory much more likely. Tons of people voted "not Hillary" with their Trump vote.

    I'm not saying there was no Russian collusion, but lets look at all the reasons.

    1. Re:The democratic party did itself in by Nidi62 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      By actively preventing Bernie from getting the democratic nomination they made a Trump victory much more likely. Tons of people voted "not Hillary" with their Trump vote. I'm not saying there was no Russian collusion, but lets look at all the reasons.

      Personally, I would probably have voted for Bernie because, much like Trump, I know most of his crazier policies would never make it through and, unlike Trump, Bernie would do what he actually thought was best for the country. However, since the Democrats were dead set to run Hillary, I ended up voting for Johnson.

      For this though, they are just shooting themselves in the foot. The suit will go nowhere and it will just give the right-wing talking heads and trolls more fodder to rile up the right even more. It's definitely partisan. Maybe an attempt to out-Trump trump? Get him focused on this lawsuit instead of Mueller or Cohen?

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    2. Re:The democratic party did itself in by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I agree that serious missteps were made. However, I think losing was actually a blessing in disguise because it exposed how the Republican party is incapable of even basic governance. They have control of both Congress and the White House and yet they have made a complete and total mess of things. It's also exposed how they are willing to put the good of their political party before the good of the nation. McConnell refuses to put basic safeguards in place to prevent a constitutional crisis despite ample evidence that it's needed.

      Honestly, this is the custerfuck that everyone needed to witness.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    3. Re:The democratic party did itself in by Nidi62 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      By actively preventing Bernie from getting the democratic nomination they made a Trump victory much more likely. Tons of people voted "not Hillary" with their Trump vote.

      I'm not saying there was no Russian collusion, but lets look at all the reasons.

      There is no way Bernie could have won the election though. He is too-far left, America will never elect a Bernie.

      A lot of voters didn't care about far-left or far-right. They were just sick of your average politician. So if the choice was Hillary, the embodiment of an average "corrupt" politician, or Trump, a decidedly non-political person who (at least appeared to) speak his mind, the choice was obvious for them.

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  3. Democratic Party conspired to rig the primaries by bigpat · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And more importantly Democratic Party got caught red handed by our Russian hackers conspiring to rig the primaries.

    Time to stop publicly funding the partisan primary system. We shouldn't be publicly subsidizing secret cabals of rich well connected people conspiring to get "their people" into our government.

  4. insane by TheMeuge · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Frankly, this is utter insanity.
    Don't attribute to malice, what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
    To that I ascribe the activities of the Republican and Democratic parties that got us the 2016 election result.

    This lawsuit is a media and money-grabbing stunt, that is also a further attempt to de-legitimize anyone who disagrees with you. Kind of like on Slashdot, where if you utter anything but a Trump slur, and are immediately called a Russian troll.

  5. Re:Russian derangement syndrome is fatal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Anything that distracts from the real news of what they were actually up to at the time works for them. They didn't consider Trump an actual threat, they anointed Hillary and damaged their own rather than let party supporters decide, broke laws, spun lies - you know same thing the Republicans do.

    Both parties are rotten to the core and the system is set up in a way that you can't get rid of them. Good luck America, you're going to need it!

  6. Not Partisan...srsly? by RandomFactor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When I read the national chairman of a political party saying

    ..."it's not partisan, it's patriotic"

    I hear a gangster saying

    ..."It's 'not personal, it's business"

    --
    --- Mercutio was right.
  7. why don't you just try to actually win? by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why don't you instead try to convince people outside of your various interest and grievance groups that you are actually worth voting for?

    Here's a tip: if a clown can beat you, the problem isn't the clown ...

  8. Not entirely the DNC. by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The DNC definitely didn't help itself by putting forward such a boring, unpopular candidate and then doing seemingly everything they could to prevent Bernie from winning.

    By actively preventing Bernie from getting the democratic nomination they made a Trump victory much more likely. Tons of people voted "not Hillary" with their Trump vote.

    It's come out that Russia influenced this too. As soon as Bernie was out of the way, they doubled down stoking the fires to get Bernie supporters mad at Hillary. I doubt any significant amount of people who were voting on policy ended up switching, but those who were voting emotionally to begin with were probably pretty easy targets.

  9. Re:It was more than that by SuricouRaven · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Trump did look like the easiest candidate to beat. He ran rallies uncomfortably similar to those of Hitler, blamed every problem the country faced on immigrants, pledged to imprison his political opponents, dismissed one female critic by implying she was only upset because of her period. The reasonable conclusion was that the American public would have to be stark raving mad to vote for a candidate like that.

    Unfortunately, it turns out the American public actually *are* stark raving mad.

  10. Brilliant idea by guacamole · · Score: 4, Insightful

    DNC thinks it can prove what Mueller couldn't so far. Frankly, the collusion conspiracy theory is getting so tiring. The Dems have gone insane and they will lose the White House again in 2020 because they can't seem to offer any new vision for the party.

  11. Re: It was more than that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Meanwhile, the US economy is doing great, illegal immigration is down, jobs and employment are up, ISIS has lost 98% of its territory, and North Korea seems to be on the verge of denuclearizing... Yeah this Trump guy is terrible!

  12. Re:Willful ignorance by Ritz_Just_Ritz · · Score: 1, Insightful

    When Obama won, the messaging parroted by the media was "He won, let him do his thing." And Obama has both the House and the Senate in the Democratic corner as well. And he achieved pretty much nothing other than distorting the US healthcare system. By almost any other measure, he was a weak and ineffective leader and will go down in history as one of the worst US presidents in history.

    The jury is still out with Trump, but I feel like he's accomplished a LOT more than Obama ever did and it's only been a little over a year. He won and if the economy keeps going well, he'll probably win again if he chooses to run again. What's good for the goose....