Russia Wants DNC Hack Lawsuit Thrown Out, Citing International Conventions (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: The Russian Federation has responded to a lawsuit filed by the Democratic National Committee and has requested the overseeing court to throw out the lawsuit altogether. The lawsuit, filed by the DNC in April 2018, names a slew of figures as defendants, such as the Russian state, Russia's military intelligence service GRU, the hacker known as Guccifer 2.0, WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, and several members of the Trump campaign, such as Donald Trump, Jr., Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Jared Kushner, and George Papadopoulos. According to an 87-page indictment, the DNC accused Russia and the other defendants of carrying out the hacking of DNC servers in 2016 and then leaking data online via the WikiLeaks portal in an orchestrated manner for the benefit of the Trump presidential campaign.

The lawsuit, which has its own Wikipedia page and was likened to a lawsuit the DNC filed against Nixon after the Watergate scandal, seeks damages, but also for the court to issue a declaration about the defendants' conspiracy. But in a letter sent to a New York court, presented by the Russian Embassy in the U.S. and signed by a representative of the Russian Ministry of Justice, the Russian Federation wants the lawsuit thrown out. In the 12-page letter, the Russian Federation argues that the U.S. Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act ("FSIA") grants Russia immunity. "The FSIA provides that foreign sovereign States enjoy absolute jurisdictional immunity from suit unless a plaintiff can demonstrate that one of the FSIA's enumerated 'exceptions' applies'," the letter argues. "The DNC's allegations regarding a purported 'military attack' by 'Russia's military intelligence agency' do not fall within any of the FSIA's enumerated exceptions to the Russian Federation's sovereign immunity."

"Any alleged 'military attack' is a quintessential sovereign act that does not fall within any exception to the FSIA or the customary international law of foreign sovereign immunity. The Russian Federation's sovereign immunity with respect to claims based upon such allegations is absolute."

Comments

Should this be actionable?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a never-Trump Republican. I hate the fact that the cheeto won. But I don't like this lawsuit at all.
AIUI, they're suing people for leaking the truth. They're saying the truth hurt the Clinton campaign and gave us this gimboid.
The allegedly damaging contents of those emails are things the voters had a right to know.
Much like truth is a defense to defamation, it ought to be a defense here.

Re:Should this be actionable?

[Anonymous Coward]

> First, in a competitive election, it is simply not fair (to the voters) to expose the dirt of one party and not the other. I assume, and I think MOST Americans assume that there is terrible corruption and dirt present in both major parties. If you think that the Republican party is not hiding a bunch of dirt, please explicitly state that, because otherwise it is hypocritical.

Does this apply to the DNC itself too? The RNC? Are they obligated to release their own dirt? How do you claim to enforce that? I don't know what the RNC is hiding, but it seems odd to reverse the burden of proof like that. Also, the media is doing a fine job of leaking dirt on Trump. Why do they need Russian help again?

Moreover, the main thing the DNC was guilty of was rigging their own primaries. We know the RNC isn't doing that because we got Trump, the weakest candidate.

> Second, if, as seems likely at this point, these hacks were carried out by someone acting on behalf of the Russian government, then every American should be fighting mad. Agents of an adversarial power interfering in our elections? Are you kidding me? That's a violation of our sovereignty. And yes, I know that the US has a bad history of doing this to other countries. They also have every right to be royally pissed off at us for that.

Not at all. I want the dirt on everyone released. The media is already doing a good job on releasing Trump's dirt on their own, I don't think they need Russian help. But the fact that they ignored all the DNC dirt bothers me.

I'm sorry, but these complaints seem hypocritical to me. Showing us how you'll excuse your own side for the sake of power is why we mistrust you, you know. Overreacting to silly memes and wanting to ban free speech just makes you look like tyrants. You can wax poetic about Putin all day, but he's not the one convincing us that you're untrustworthy with power, you're doing a fine job of that yourself with the overreactions.

Re:Should this be actionable?

[Solandri]

First, in a competitive election, it is simply not fair (to the voters) to expose the dirt of one party and not the other. I assume, and I think MOST Americans assume that there is terrible corruption and dirt present in both major parties.

As long as we're talking about having an ideal world, can you agree that it's simply not fair for 90% of the press to mostly be trying to dig up dirt on one party, and only 10% trying to dig up dirt on the other party? If the press reports an equal amount of corruption in the Republican party as in the Democratic party, I'd take that as a pretty good sign that the Republican party is a lot less corrupt.

Second, if, as seems likely at this point, these hacks were carried out by someone acting on behalf of the Russian government, then every American should be fighting mad. Agents of an adversarial power interfering in our elections?

I've been thinking about that too. Apparently we're upset that people who cannot vote in our elections tried to influence our election.

But by that reasoning, shouldn't both political parties be prohibited from taking money raised outside a state or Congressional district, and using it to campaign for a candidate in those races? After all, that's money from someone outside that state/district who doesn't have a vote in that race trying to influence that election.

The DNC hack was a good thing.

[imperious_rex]

The Russians' did the American people a favor by hacking the DNC. It exposed what most Bernie Sanders supporters suspected, but could not prove: that the DNC had already decided that their handpicked gal Hillary was going to win the primary, no matter how much support other primary candidates had. There was nothing "democratic" about the process. The DNC wanted Hillary to win the primary and they got what they wanted. But come November, Hillary lost out to Trump. Ooops.

Re:The DNC hack was a good thing.

[imperious_rex]

What's the point of having a primary election if the party leadership has already decided who is going to get the nomination? Sanders and all the other Democrat presidential primary candidates should have just stayed home and sat out the primary election process, since the designated nominee was a foregone conclusion. Being an unaffiliated voter, I'm just an outside observer of the Democrats and I find the undemocratic conduct of the party's leadership to be appalling.

Huge error in this

[McFortner]

"The Russian Federation has responded to a lawsuit filed by the Democratic National Committee..."

...

"According to an 87-page indictment..."

The DNC is bringing forth this lawsuit, not the state, so it's not a criminal case but a CIVIL lawsuit. It even says so on page one of the documents posted, "Civil Action No. 1:18-cv-0350" and "AMENDED COMPLAINT" (emphasis from the original). Therefore, it can't be and indictment because that is only used in CRIMINAL cases brought forth by the state and not in civil cases. ZDNet therefore got their terminology wrong, either on purpose or accidentally. Either way, it is a basic point of law that even I caught at first glance.

Maybe they need to stop watching so much legal dramas on TV. Heaven knows those get it wrong all the time. If you can't get something this basic right, how can we trust your "legal analysis" on anything else?

Re:IMNAL, but this seems right

[rtb61]

When it is a threat to the democracy of the nation, not only do you break the door down but pretty much you take the fuckers outside and shoot them in the head, so exactly what is your fucking point. They did not give a fuck about MS13 assassinating the leaker at the behest of DNC insider because otherwise they could testify exactly where the information came from.

I personally would have liked to see the court case but like the Russian government I could guess exactly what kind of shite show it would have been, extremely long and pointless with all sorts of lies put out, to be spread by corporate main stream media and 10 fucking years latter they just walk away from it like it never existed and the Russia government can not counter sue, all though technically in the spirit of this case, they should really sue, for I know, the US government fomenting terrorism in Chechnya and seek to extradite the last Tsarnev brother to testify, oh yea and appointing the drunk to head the Russia state so that US corporations could strip mine Russia assets and all those propagandistic lies, a kicking out diplomats based upon lies and sustained and continued economic warfare, repeated threats to launch a nuclear attack on Russia and blaming Russia for the actions of the US government.

Don't even propagandistically try to pretend that shit case had anything to do with the truth, we know who did it and why insiders from the DNC paid for the hit, so that he could no testify about the real source. US elections are a joke, cheating in the whole process is accepted and the norm, a true third world democracy, a fucking joke democracy, run as some kind of corporate mafia state, murdering people all over the globe for profit.

Re:If The DNC were so concerned

[Patent Lover]

Probably because the FBI never asked:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/a...