The Democrats Are Suing Basically Anyone Who Was Even Maybe Involved In the 2016 Hacking Scandal

On Friday, the Democratic National Committee filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against virtually every individual or organization who may have played a role in the 2016 Russian email hacking scandal.

As the Washington Post reported:

The complaint, filed in federal district court in Manhattan, alleges that top Trump campaign officials conspired with the Russian government and its military spy agency to hurt Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and help Trump by hacking the computer networks of the Democratic Party and disseminating stolen material found there.

“During the 2016 presidential campaign, Russia launched an all-out assault on our democracy, and it found a willing and active partner in Donald Trump’s campaign,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez said in a statement.

“This constituted 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,” he said.

The defendants named in the suit make for a wild who’s-who, with the hacker and alleged Russian intelligence officer known as Guccifer 2.0, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Donald Trump, the Trump presidential campaign and his close associates, George Papadopoulos, and the entirety of the Russian government all named.

The lawsuit also paints a picture of an allegedly vast conspiracy—which they say involved the Trump campaign coordinating with the Kremlin, Russian hackers stealing damaging records from the DNC and then handing them over to Wikileaks—to undermine the Democrats’ performance in the 2016 election, an idea that may be cathartic to many embittered Democratic voters, but seems impractical from a legal standpoint.

It has been 17 months since the 2016 election. Democrats have just seven months to try to flip the House of Representatives in the midterm elections. Investing in getting out the vote for the millions of Americans who stayed home on Election Day 2016 is an infinitely better use of the DNC’s time and money than this lawsuit is. Throwing more lawsuits and more money at the problem will never change what happened on November 8, 2016.