A lawsuit alleging Trump campaign officials and Russia teamed up to publish Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails in the final months of the 2016 presidential election was dismissed by a U.S. District Court judge on Tuesday.
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle dismissed the lawsuit due to the court’s lack of “personal jurisdiction over defendants.” “Campaign meetings, canvassing voters, and other regular business activities of a political campaign do not constitute activities related to the conspiracies alleged in the complaint,” the district judge’s opinion read. “The same is true of the fact that the Trump Campaign’s foreign policy team was based in the District. Its mere presence here, without it undertaking overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracies, does not represent a suit-related contact.”
Judge Huvelle said the lawsuit’s dismissal was not a ruling on claims of collusion between Trump campaign officials and the Kremlin, noting “Washington D.C. is not the proper venue for plaintiffs’ suit.”
“It bears emphasizing that this Court’s ruling is not based on a finding that there was no collusion between defendants and Russia during the 2016 presidential election,” Huvelle wrote. “This is the wrong forum for plaintiffs’ lawsuit. The Court takes no position on the merits of plaintiffs’ claims.”
DNC donors Eric Schoenberg and Roy Cockrum, along with Party staffer Scott Comer, say veteran political operative and short-lived Trump campaign advisor Roger Stone violated privacy laws in conspiring with WikiLeaks, an alleged-Russia cutout, to publish the emails. Moreover, their complaint alleges Trump campaign officials “entered into an agreement with other parties, including agents of Russia and WikiLeaks, to have information stolen from the DNC publicly disseminated in a strategic way that would benefit the campaign to elect Mr. Trump as President.”
President Donald Trump’s attorneys filed a motion in the fall of last year to have the lawsuit thrown out.
“This lawsuit threatens to interfere with the President’s ability to discharge his duties. The President occupies a ‘unique position in the constitutional scheme.’ Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681, 698 (1997),” they wrote. “His ‘responsibilities’ are ‘so vast and important’ that he must ‘devote his undivided time and attention to his public duties.’ Courts therefore have an obligation to ensure that private plaintiffs do not use ‘civil discovery’ on ‘meritless claims’ to compromise his ‘ability to discharge’ his ‘constitutional responsibilities.'”
The lawsuit’s dismissal follows President Trump ratcheting up criticism towards special counsel Robert Mueller, who after a year of investigations, has yet to present evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. “When is Bob Mueller going to list his Conflicts of Interest? Why has it taken so long?” President Trump tweeted last week. “Will they be listed at the top of his $22,000,000 Report…And what about the 13 Angry Democrats, will they list their conflicts with Crooked H?”
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