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."

Comments

And hilarity ensues!!!!

[Train0987]

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

Re:And hilarity ensues!!!!

[KiviPall]

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.

Re: And hilarity ensues!!!!

[pollarda]

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.

Re:And hilarity ensues!!!!

[Oswald McWeany]

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

You're right- and bad news for Democrats. With her ability to raise financing she'll be a significant player in the primaries no matter who else runs. Hillary, like Trump, is a very polarizing figure. Disgruntled Republicans aren't going to vote Hillary- they would shoot themselves before voting for her.

She may not win the party nomination this time around, but even if she doesn't she'll probably hurt her rival nominee enough to help out Trump long term. If Hillary runs, even if she doesn't win nomination, it increases the odds of four more years of Trump.

Re:And hilarity ensues!!!!

[dbialac]

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.

Re: And hilarity ensues!!!!

[PeopleAquarium]

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.

Re:And hilarity ensues!!!!

[cayenne8]

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.

Re:And hilarity ensues!!!!

[apoc.famine]

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.

Re: And hilarity ensues!!!!

[dlkwnt]

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.

Re: And hilarity ensues!!!!

[Nidi62]

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

Everyone you work with and are friends with has been doing illegals things. What does that say about you?

That I probably shouldn't be president?

Re:And hilarity ensues!!!!

[rickb928]

They have no case, even against themselves. Bernie lost because the DNC rigged the primary - legally. All according to rules.

Except, perhaps, maybe, the Clinton campaign starving his campaign by laundering donations through state committees. But that's an FEC violation waiting only for the FEC to act, as the allegations have been in the public domain for more than a year, and the evidence seems overwhelmingly obvious. Especially to Bernie.

Re: And hilarity ensues!!!!

[pollarda]

Not necessarily. Flynn's confession was coerced. He'd spent over a million on legal and lost his house and they were saying they were going after his son next. The judge who presided is currently reviewing everything which is almost unheard of after a plea. I'm sure you are a good guy and all but I'm equally sure that if a Special Council looked through your life close enough they could put you away. I had this same conversation with a friend who was high up in the Bill Clinton campaign. He didn't believe me. I rattled off a bunch of laws that I suspected he'd broken and let him know that all those could send him to prison. He said: "Oh, I didn't know doing those was illegal". I said: Yep, that's my point. There is a lot of stuff that we do every day that is covered by felony level laws that we don't know about or simply ignore because we don't think they apply. All it takes is for a prosecutor to decide to follow up. I'm still waiting for someone to look at Huma Abbedin's forwarding classified emails to her husband to print. They are ignoring it. But I know that if any of my friends that I grew up with in Los Alamos did that with our nuclear secrets there would be hell to pay.

Re: And hilarity ensues!!!!

[pollarda]

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....

Re: And hilarity ensues!!!!

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

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.

Re:And hilarity ensues!!!!

[sabri]

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.

Re: And hilarity ensues!!!!

[quantaman]

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.

Re:And hilarity ensues!!!!

[jythie]

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.

Re: And hilarity ensues!!!!

[PeopleAquarium]

The guy won. Move on.

Whether Trump won or not isn't the question. The question is "Did he criminally collude with the Russians to interfere in a United States presidential election?" It's an important question, because that basically undermines the entire electoral process of the nation, and makes Trump an enemy of the state.

Neither of us knows the answer to that question though. If anyone can find out though, Robert Mueller can.

He's the Republican, war veteran, investigator who took down Sammy the Bull and Teflon Don. He's also very tricky. For instance, the thing where he subpoenaed a bunch of emails that were already in his posession, just to see which ones they would leave out was brilliant. It worked. They tried to hide evidence by omitting the ones that made them look guilty and saved Mueller the hassle of reading through thousands of emails. They pled guilty not long after they realized they'd been duped.

If Trumps guilty Mueller will prove it. If he's innocent then Mueller will prove that. Until he closes the investigation though there is zero chance that either of us know what the evidence actually says.

Re: And hilarity ensues!!!!

[Train0987]

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.

Re:And hilarity ensues!!!!

[smugfunt]

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

Re: And hilarity ensues!!!!

[tbannist]

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.

No. It's not.

Mueller referred something he found that indicated Cohen had acted illegally to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who asked the FBI to conduct the raid. The Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, a Trump appointee, signed the warrant, so the either the evidence that Michael Cohen broke the law and was likely to destroy evidence if issued a subpoena was pretty convincing, or even people Trump has appointed to their positions are joining the "witch-hunt conspiracy" to overthrow him.

But that circus clown has inadvertently ripped the mask off the thoroughly corrupt establishment.

Are you sure it's not the clown who's thoroughly corrupt? Because Trump has a long, long history of corruption. I'm not sure why I should believe he's stopped being a corrupt, double-dealing, backstabber now that he's president.

Re:And hilarity ensues!!!!

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

You voted for a delegate to represent a candidate, not a candidate. They also had a big chunk of "superdelegates", appointed by the party itself, so that everything wouldn't be left in the hands of smelly, stupid individual voters like yourself.

Imagine if you dislike gun violence and have never owned a gun and you get robbed at home by a gun toting criminal who takes stuff you really don't want to lose. And then you buy a gun so this won't happen again and I call you an "ammosexual gun lover and supporter of gun violence who hates kids". I get that it's fun to claim that the Democrats did this so only the big cheese could pick the winner, but that's about as accurate as calling you an ammosexual in my example.

The superdelegate thing was a reaction, maybe an overreaction, to the 1972 and 1980 election disasters the Democrats suffered. The rules at the time forced them to nominate what were basically unwinnable candidates. Superdelegates were put in so that there wouldn't be any more brokered conventions (the 1968 one also ended in a White House loss) and if something weird happened in the vote where a fringe candidate with almost no chance of victory somehow ended up with a small majority of elected delegates (McGovern in 1972), the superdelegates could save the election by voting for a better candidate. Now it's fair to argue if maybe the intentions were OK but it gives the appearance (accurate or not) of the common citizen's vote not mattering or if maybe the voters want to run a bad candidate they should be allowed to do so, but it's not really an attempt to stifle the voters so special interests get their way. I know the Sanders supporters are going to claim until they die that Bernie won and Clinton stole the nomination, but the superdelegates did not put her over the top. People forget that in 2008 the superdelegates voted mostly for Obama and they didn't mostly vote for supposed vote stealing Hillary. There's yet to be a nomination in which the superdelegates clearly voted for a 2nd place candidate in the popular vote to deny the voters their will. But again, the fact that people think that is exactly what happens all the time is possibly a very good argument that the system should be eliminated.

Re:And hilarity ensues!!!!

[apoc.famine]

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.

Re: And hilarity ensues!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mueller referred something he found that indicated Cohen had acted illegally to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who asked the FBI to conduct the raid. The Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, a Trump appointee, signed the warrant, so the either the evidence that Michael Cohen broke the law and was likely to destroy evidence if issued a subpoena was pretty convincing, or even people Trump has appointed to their positions are joining the "witch-hunt conspiracy" to overthrow him.

Also, the AG for the SD of NY is Geoffrey Berman, who was appointed to the position by Trump.

So Mueller (a Republican/GOPer), went to Rosenstein (a Trump-appointed GOPer), to referred it to Berman (a Trump-appointed GOPer).

Re: And hilarity ensues!!!!

[quantaman]

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.

The democratic party did itself in

[QuesarVII]

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.

Re:The democratic party did itself in

[Nidi62]

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?

Re:The democratic party did itself in

[Nidi62]

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.

Re: The democratic party did itself in

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

The best political cartoon I've seen on this is a chessboard with Hillary as one king, pinned in the corner, checkmate. She says, "But as you can see, I have more pieces on the board, so in a sense, I won."

Democrats and Republicans now both interfering

[Mostly a lurker]

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.

Not Partisan...srsly?

[RandomFactor]

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"

why don't you just try to actually win?

[cascadingstylesheet]

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 ...

Not entirely the DNC.

[PhrostyMcByte]

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.

It was more than that

[SuperKendall]

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.

Re:It was more than that

[SuricouRaven]

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.

Re: It was more than that

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Hillary and Trump intertwined

[SuperKendall]

The really funny thing about that election to me was, there was absolutely no other Democrat Trump could have beat - but there was no other Republican Hillary could have lost to.

Trump is lite a literal embodiment of proof there is fate or some higher power at work.

Brilliant idea

[guacamole]

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.