Slashdot Mirror
Democratic Party Files Suit Alleging Russia, the Trump Campaign, and WikiLeaks Conspired To Disrupt the 2016 Election (cnbc.com)
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."
Up until now, the Democrats have generally behaved properly in respect of the Russia investigation, leaving the interference and unwarranted attacks on law enforcement to the White House and the Republicans. However, I was distressed to read about this.
It is totally inappropriate to engage in this kind of political theater while Mueller's investigation is ongoing. When Trump and the Republicans are lying and attempting to interfere, by all means denounce their actions forcefully. However, lowering yourself to their level just feeds into the narrative that all politicians are the same, and they are all unprincipled conmen. It makes it harder to defend the institutions that are under attack.
I really believe if a small group of 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans in Congress could come together to denounce all anti-democratic activities, and pledge to act together in the country's best interests, they would do themselves and the country a great deal of good. The silent majority would applaud them. I am not holding my breath. I appreciate, by the way, that acting ethically here is more difficult for the Republicans as their administration has a lot to lose. However, I think that they could present their actions as heroic and vastly enhance their personal reputations in the process.
I honestly don't think she will. And I don't think this is evidence of anything related to a specific campaign.
The DNC did the same thing after Watergate. That was a pretty successful lawsuit, and they gained a lot from it. My guess is that they're seeing echos of Watergate here, and playing the same hand that was successful the last time this sort of thing happened.
And a civil lawsuit will be very damaging to the RNC win or lose. They will be forced to air some dirty laundry in court, and it will likely demonstrate just how unprepared they were to be hitching a ride on the Trump train. My guess is that there's just as many distasteful things happening in the RNC as in the DNC, and this is one way to bring some of them to light.
I also fully expect a counter-suit from the RNC along the same lines. If that doesn't happen, I think some good money is on them having done some really problematic things that they want to limit exposure on.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Hilary and the DNC actively promoted Trump, because they thought he was the easiest candidate to beat.
Hillary, far more than Russia, is the reason Trump is president.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Spare me. If they'd found a shred of evidence it would have been leaked already like they leaked everything else. This whole "investigation" has been a sham trial by media and now they're just trying to goad Trump into doing something they can use to extend the party...
It's all over but the shouting. I see this as an act of desperation by the Democratic party. Mid-term elections are coming soon, the economy is doing well, unemployment is down, and they have been mostly too busy obstructing and absent from helping.
The guy won. Move on.
Federal law however has some strong things to say about how the 'actual' election is supposed to be run.
Except the obvious rule that voters have to provide proof of U.S. Citizenship.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
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 but, considering the average person commits three felonies a day.... Now the Democrats want their own investigation where they themselves can run it and leak with impunity.
On the contrary Mueller's investigation seems to be moving fairly quickly.
And he's gotten a bunch of guilty pleas, including from Flynn, Papadopoulos, Gates who were some fairly important campaign members. Not to mention having Manafort absolutely dead-to-rights on really serious money laundering. Cohen, Trump's lawyer/fixer, being under direct investigation and having his documents seized. Not to mention Kushner, Trump's son in law, is now being investigated for both his company's long history of fishy dealings (submitting fraudulent docs for renovation permits), not to mention the question of who gave Kushner 1.2 billion to bail out the family business and why?
You are correct that we don't have any public indictments connecting the Trump campaign with Russian intelligence, but the investigation is far from over, and Mueller isn't likely to show his hand until he's ready to charge someone.
For instance, there's already rumours that Mueller has evidence that Cohen made a secret trip to Prague, an major allegation from the Steele Dossier that Cohen has denied. But Mueller may not want to make that evidence public at this point in the investigation, nor may he want to do it in October when he might be accused of inappropriate interference like Comey did. But if that evidence doesn't come out till after the election it doesn't help Democrats till 2020, and if they don't win a house they won't be able to launch congressional investigations.
More likely the suit has 3 objectives.
1) See if they can use subpoenas to get their hands on any proof of collusion before the midterms.
2) Open a line of legal inquiry going that Trump can't pardon/fire his was out of.
3) Keep generating Trump-Russia news. As they learned from the Clinton emails once the narrative is established all you need to do it trigger the keywords to be effective.
I stole this Sig