''Democratic National Committee v. Russian Federation, et al.'' was a civil lawsuit filed by the

Democratic National Committee The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is the governing body of the United States Democratic Party. The committee coordinates strategy to support Democratic Party candidates throughout the country for local, state, and national office, as well a ...

(DNC) in the

United States District Court for the Southern District of New York The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in case citations, S.D.N.Y.) is a United States district court, federal trial court whose geographic jurisdiction encompasses eight counties of New York (state), New York ...

against the

Russian Federation Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is an international Nonprofit organization, non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous Source (journalism), sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activism, Internet acti ...

and other entities and individuals. The case, relating to

Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections The Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with the goals of harming the campaign of Hillary Clinton, boosting the candidacy of Donald Trump, and increasing political and social discord in the United States. Acc ...

, was filed on April 20, 2018. The DNC's complaint accused the Trump campaign of engaging in a

racketeering Racketeering is a type of organized crime in which the perpetrators set up a coercive, fraudulent, extortionary, or otherwise illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a "racket") to repeatedly or consistently collect a profit. Originally and of ...

enterprise in conjunction with Russia and

. The

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that provides pro bono legal services and resources to and on behalf of journalists. The organization pursues litigation, offers direct ...

and others filed friend-of-the-court briefs expressing concern over the lawsuit's implications for

freedom of the press Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the fundamental principle that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic News media, media, especially publication, published materials, should be conside ...

. Judge John G. Koeltl presided over the case, prior to dismissing it

with prejudice Prejudice is a legal term with different meanings, which depend on whether it is used in criminal, civil, or common law. In legal context, "prejudice" differs from the more common use of the word and so the term has specific technical meanings. ...

on July 30, 2019. In dismissing the case, Judge Koeltl wrote that holding WikiLeaks liable for the publication of DNC emails would endanger press freedom, and that the

enjoys

sovereign immunity Sovereign immunity, or crown immunity, is a legal doctrine whereby a sovereign or state cannot commit a legal wrong and is immune from civil suit or criminal prosecution, strictly speaking in modern texts in its own courts. A similar, stronger ...

Defendants

Named as defendants in the lawsuit are the

; the

General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation The General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (russian: Генеральный штаб Вооружённых сил Российской Федерации, General'nyy shtab Vooruzhonnykh sil Rossiyskoy Federatsii) is the mil ...

(GRU); the GRU operative using the pseudonym "

Guccifer 2.0 "Guccifer 2.0" is a persona which claimed to be the hacker(s) who gained unauthorized access to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer network and then leaked its documents to the media, the website WikiLeaks, and a conference event. S ...

Aras Iskenerovich Agalarov Aras Iskanderovich Agalarov ( az, Araz İsgəndəroviç Ağalarov; russian: link=no, Ара́з Исканде́рович Агала́ров; born 8 November 1955) is an Azerbaijani-Russian billionaire real estate developer. Several sources hav ...

; Emin Araz Agalarov;

Joseph Mifsud Joseph Mifsud (born 1960) is a Maltese academic. In 2016, he became involved with George Papadopoulos, an advisor to the Donald Trump presidential campaign, and was later accused of being a link between that campaign and Russia. In 2018, he wa ...

;

Julian Assange Julian Paul Assange ( ; Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army inte ...

; the Trump campaign (formally "Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.");

Donald Trump, Jr. Donald is a masculine given name derived from the Gaelic name ''Dòmhnall''.. This comes from the Proto-Celtic *''Dumno-ualos'' ("world-ruler" or "world-wielder"). The final -''d'' in ''Donald'' is partly derived from a misinterpretation of the ...

;

Paul Manafort Paul John Manafort Jr. (; born April 1, 1949) is an American lobbyist, political consultant, and attorney. A long-time Republican Party campaign consultant, he chaired the Trump presidential campaign from June to August 2016. Manafort served ...

;

Roger Stone Roger Jason Stone (born Roger Joseph Stone Jr.; August 27, 1952) is an American conservative political consultant and lobbyist. Since the 1970s, Stone has worked on the campaigns of Republican politicians, including Richard Nixon, Ronald Rea ...

;

Jared Kushner Jared Corey Kushner (born January 10, 1981) is an American businessman and investor. He served as a senior advisor to 45th U.S. president Donald Trump, his father-in-law. Since leaving the White House, Kushner founded Affinity Partners, a pri ...

;

George Papadopoulos George Demetrios Papadopoulos (; born August 19, 1987) is an author and former member of the foreign policy advisory panel to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. On October 5, 2017, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to a felony charge of mak ...

; Richard W. Gates; and unnamed defendants sued as

John Doe John Doe (male) and Jane Doe (female) are multiple-use placeholder names that are used when the true name of a person is unknown or is being intentionally concealed. In the context of law enforcement in the United States, such names are often ...

s 1–10. The U.S. government has concluded that the GRU, the Russian military intelligence service, was responsible for hacking into the DNC's servers in 2016 and leaking emails to WikiLeaks, which published them.

Motions

A pre-motion conference was held on September 13, 201

On October 3, the DNC filed an amended complain

On December 6–7, defendants Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos, Aras and Emin Agalarov, Jared Kushner, Roger Stone, and the Trump campaign, all filed motions to dismiss the amended complaint, arguing ''inter alia'' that the plaintiff did not allege that they participated in the hacking or dissemination of the stolen informatio

On December 7, WikiLeaks also filed a motion to dismiss the case on other grounds, notably the First Amendment and lack of jurisdictio

The complaint was further amended on January 18, 201

which defendants again moved to dismiss on March 4, 201

Attorneys for WikiLeaks also filed a motion to dismiss the second amended complaint on that da

Plaintiff formally opposed those motions on April 18, 201

Dismissal

The suit was dismissed

on July 30, 2019, meaning it had a substantive legal defect and could not be refiled. In his judgement, Judge

John Koeltl John George Koeltl (; born October 25, 1945) is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan. Education Koeltl was born in New York City. He graduated from Regis High Scho ...

wrote that even if the Russian government were involved in the hacking, US federal law generally prohibits suits against foreign governments. As for the various other defendants, the judge wrote that they "did not participate in any wrongdoing in obtaining the materials in the first place" and therefore had the

First Amendment First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...

right to publish the information. Koeltl denied the Trump campaign defendants' motion for sanctions.

Commentary

The suit has been compared to the DNC's 1972 suit against

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

Committee to Re-elect the President A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly. A committee is not itself considered to be a form of assembly. Usually, the assembly sends matters into a committee as a way to explore them more ...

in connection with the

Watergate scandal The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974 that led to Nixon's resignation. The scandal stemmed from the Nixon administration's continual ...

; that suit was settled in 1974 on the day Nixon resigned from office. The DNC chose not to reveal how much the lawsuit would cost. The group of defendants named in the DNC lawsuit overlaps with the group of people who have been investigated in connection with the probe led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Gates pleaded guilty to charges brought by Mueller in February 2018 and cooperated in the investigation, while Manafort has been charged and has pleaded not guilty. Aras and Emin Agalarov, who are also named as defendants in the lawsuit, are a father-and-son pair of Russian businessmen who hosted Trump's

Miss Universe 2013 Miss Universe 2013 was the 62nd Miss Universe pageant, held at the Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk, Moscow, Russia on November 9, 2013. At the end of the event, Olivia Culpo of the United States crowned Gabriela Isler of Venezuela as Miss Uni ...

Pageant in Moscow and who were involved in planning a June 9 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer "at which Donald Trump Jr. had expected to be given damaging information" about Democratic presidential nominee

Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...

. In a tweet following the decision, Trump Sr. called it "vindication & exoneration from the Russian, WikiLeaks and every other form of HOAX perpetrated by the DNC, Radical Democrats and others."Judge dismisses DNC suit against Trump campaign, Russia over email hack, Josh Gerstein, ''Politico''

References

{{Reflist

External links

Full Complaint

Docket
2018 in United States case law Democratic National Committee Democratic Party (United States) litigation Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections United States District Court for the Southern District of New York cases Legal cases involving WikiLeaks