Report: US Democratic Party sues Russia, Trump campaign, WikiLeaks

MOSCOW, Apr 23 (PRIME) -- The U.S. Democratic Party submitted a lawsuit on April 20 against 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, business news portal CNBC said.

The multimillion-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 (DNC), 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, DNC chairman, said the party’s suit “is not partisan, it’s patriotic.”

“If the occupant of the Oval Office won’t protect our democracy, Democrats will. It is our obligation to the American people,” Perez said.

He called the alleged conspiracy “an act of unprecedented treachery: the campaign of a nominee for President of the United States in league with a hostile foreign power to bolster its own chance to win the presidency.”

The named defendants in the lawsuit include Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law Jared Kushner, former campaign chief Paul Manafort and campaign official Richard Gates, and Trump ally Roger Stone.

Also named is the Russian Federation, the general staff of the Russian armed forces, a Russian intelligence services hacker known as Guccifer 2.0., WikiLeaks and its leader Julian Assange, and 10 unidentified people.

The suit says Russia is not entitled to sovereign immunity from the action, because the claims stem from Russia’s “trespass on to the DNC’s private (computer) servers” to steal information.

The DNC said that while it would be impossible “to fully repair the harm caused by the defendants, the DNC has filed this civil complaint ... to hold the defendants accountable for their misconduct and to ensure transparency.”

The suit says that the Trump campaign solicited Russia’s illegal assistance and maintained secret communications with people linked to the Russian government, including a spy agency tasked with attacking the DNC.

The suit goes on to say that Russian agents trespassed into the DNC’s computer network and other electronic accounts, “collected trade secrets and other private data” and then sent that information to WikiLeaks, a private group well-known for publishing secret documents.

The founder of WikiLeaks, Assange, “shared the defendants’ common goal of damaging the Democratic party in advance of the election,” according to the suit.

Russia, using WikiLeaks, would disseminate information stolen from the Democrats “at times when it would best suit the Trump campaign,” the suit said.

The lawsuit noted that as the stolen DNC information was released publicly, “Trump openly praised the illegal disseminations and encouraged Russia to continue violations of U.S. law through its ongoing hacking campaign.”

End