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The Democratic National Committee isn’t sitting around while Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigates Russia’s role in the 2016 election. According to the Washington Post, DNC this morning filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Russian government, WikiLeaks and key officials inside Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, accusing them of computer fraud, data theft, racketeering and more. DNC hopes to swaying the outcome of a presidential election.
In the 66-page lawsuit, the case is laid out for 12 legal violations that largely deal with Russia’s alleged involvement in infiltrating US computer systems, the collection of private data that belonged to the DNC, and corporation with third-parties like WikiLeaks to spread the information.
The lawsuit argues that the actions previously listed amounted to a successful criminal conspiracy that influenced the US electoral process. The suit alleges that all the defendants violated the RICO Act — law designed to combat organized crime — but it’s unclear whether these legal proceeding could end up with delivering some serious jail time for everyone involved.
The Post notes that the lawsuit is only seeking millions of dollars in financial restitution and punitive damages. Tom Perez, chairman of the DNC, laid out the party’s rationale for filing such a wide-reaching lawsuit in a post on Medium.
“We’re taking this action because we believe no one is above the law, and we must pursue every avenue of justice against those who engaged in this illegal activity against the DNC and our democracy,” he said. “We must also prevent future attacks on our democracy, and that’s exactly what we’re doing today.”
