Althouse: "The Democratic Party on Friday sued President Donald Trump's presidential campaign, the Russian government and the Wikileaks group, claiming a broad illegal conspiracy to help Trump win the 2016 election."

April 20, 2018

"The Democratic Party on Friday sued President Donald Trump's presidential campaign, the Russian government and the Wikileaks group, claiming a broad illegal conspiracy to help Trump win the 2016 election."

"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 suit alleges claims that include conspiracy, computer fraud and abuse, misappropriation of trade secrets, trespass and other violations of the law."

CNBC Reports.

Now that there's a lawsuit, it's time to think about counterclaims. I'd like to see what the defendants would come up with using an equally aggressive, far-reaching approach to using the courts to promote your political cause.

407 comments:

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chickelit said...: Since the real parties at interest -- George Soros and Hillary Clinton -- are not named, may me assume that they are the real parties at interest?; 4/21/18, 12:05 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: "2. That they hacked the DNC and gave the emails to Wikileaks. Now that is going to be interesting if they get it into court. They will have to show just HOW the Russians hacked the DNC. That is going to raise all sorts of questions about data transfer rates and so on. There is a technical case to be made that the data was stolen internally on a USB drive rather than externally over a network connection.

If it was stolen internally, who in the DNC organization was responsible?"

I think the way that they try to make their case, assuming that they have thought it through enough, is to rely on the report by the 5 intelligence agencies. Try maybe to get it accepted by the court as some form of official record exception to the hearsay rule. Because all they really have is hearsay, which was involves the report by those agencies that the Russians hacked the email. The argument would probably be to the effect that this sort of report has to be accurate, since the US govt bases national security on such. Of course, even if they could get the govt analysts on the stand, they couldn't add much, because they were depending on Cloudstrike, which means another layer of hearsay. And, of course, the report was intentionally biased and pretty bogus, written by a handful of handpicked, reliable, analysts, contrary to how this sort of report is usually written. Clapper and Brennan playing dirty again. So, no doubt, they are going to try to get the court to ignore how the sausage was made, by running it through as an official record (etc) hearsay exception.

They could, of course, put Cloudstrike analysts on the stand, but that is probably too dangerous.

At trial, they are likely to lose, because the defense can put on experts who have looked at the WikiLeaks documents, can do the calculations themselves, and show, first hand (I.e. W/o any hearsay) that it was most likely an inside job. But, of course, the goal here is not to win at trial, but to keep the pot boiling through the midterm elections, and the intelligence report asserting Russian hacking may be sufficient to overcome summary judgement, at least for the Russian defendants (who won't be served, regardless). I need to see the complaint to see if I can tell how they expect to keep the RNC, Trump campaign, etc, from being dismissed though. Should be interesting.; 4/21/18, 3:43 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: BTW I hate Scribd. Finding more and more organizations are posting PDFs with Scribd. The problem is that it is a pay service. They give you maybe 6-8 pages free to get you hooked, then won't give you more without paying their monthly fee. Except, that it is a simple matter to post PDFs on websites, along with HTML and browsers tend to do a better job of rendering PDFs than Scribd does. Why get a third party involved, which charges a fee, when the resulting product is inferior to the web publisher just posting it themselves? Makes no sense to me.

Which is a long way of saying that I tried to read the complaint, and got to maybe page 8 (of 66) and it quit on me. Just went blank. But could tell that it was BS, because they made a big thing about Kushner and Don, Jr meeting with the Russian agent (the attorney) in Trump Tower. That is supposed to prove collaboration. But, of course, the collaboration it really proves is between her, Fusion GPS, which met with her before and after her Trump Tower meeting, and the Obama Administration, that allowed her into the country, without a visa, just for that meeting. I think maybe the FBI too. Which might be a good hook to get Fusion included as a 3rd Party defendant. Probably deposeable anyway as a DNC contractor, but since they were apparently hired by the DNC and the Crooked Hillary campaign to (illegally) harm Trump through contracting with foreigners (Steele) for opposition research, they really should be part of this suit. Of course, that would be the worst thing possible for the Dems' Russian collaboration theory, since that would open up how Fusion actually acquired the salacious information they used for the Steele Dossier (which appears to be through illegal FISA 702 database searches, and from "Darth" Sydney Blumenthal (long term Clinton operative, last seen helping her blow up Lybia).; 4/21/18, 4:19 AM
WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...: Seth Rich unavailable.

DNC staffers who are gunned down for no reason, simply vanish.; 4/21/18, 8:07 AM
WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...: Why isn't anyone suing to get to the bottom of the Seth Rich murder?; 4/21/18, 8:18 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: Finally did find a copy of the complaint at PowerLine that didn’t require Scribd to read. No real surprises. They blame a bunch of things on the Russians. And of course credit Cloudstrike for discovering that the Ruskies did the hacking of their servers. All 140 of them, which seems a bit much, given how little money they have. And, of course, claim that this was corroborated by Clapper and Brennan and their handpicked group of pliable analysts. Assange and Wikileaks are included, as Russian puppets, ignoring that Assange has repeated sad that the Russians weren’t involved. And they include Guccifer 2.0, as a Russian tool, despite him being more likely a DNC operative AND Assange claiming that he had nothing to do with the “exfiltration” of the DNC emails, or, indeed, that some of the Guccifer 2.0 documents utilized an Office Template that appears to have originated with a high ranking Biden staffer.

So, a bunch of foreigners may have broken US law, but how do they tie in the Trump team (including his son and son-in-law)? Very weakly. They go back 30 years looking at Trump’s business dealings. And, of course, can’t help themselves for including, in their conspiracy theory, the meeting in Trump Tower where Trump, Jr, Kushner, etc met briefly with the Russian attorney. What they didn’t mention was that she met right before and right after with Fusion GPS - which was working, at that time for — the DNC. And, of course, the Obama Administration got her in and out of the country w/o the need for a visa, which she was never issued. Very clearly a setup, which is why discovery will be great to watch - the DNC won’t be able to resist being asked about their relationship with Fusion, since they include the meeting that that company appears to have set up prominently in their pleadings. And, Fusion will likely be asked the same, even if they aren’t brought into the suit (which I fully expect them to be). So, with Trump, et al, somehow remotely involved with the Russians, who actually may have violated US law, but are effectively unsuably, they jump to RICO and enterprise liability against all the American defendants. A lot of hand waving and no shortage of smoke and mirrors, but, in the end, they are highly unlikely to find enough actual coordination to hang any real liability on the American defendants. So, in the end, they have a plausible case against a number of non-Americans who will never be served, and little to actually tie in the American defendants, whom they can serve, into the suit.

Can the suit be dismissed on the pleadings? I don’t think so. Much is alleged, though more is left out. Surviving summary judgment is more problematic. The defendants can start bringing in the evidence that the plaintiffs so blithely ignored, and they will start having to swear to evidence that they know, deep down, is false, and know that the defendants know is false.

Should be interesting.; 4/21/18, 2:44 PM
Joe said...: The DNC should have dropped all pretense and just sued The First Amendment.; 4/22/18, 2:52 AM