Democrats sue Russia, Trump campaign for alleged 2016 election conspiracy

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - The Democratic Party sued the Russian government, U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign and WikiLeaks yesterday, charging that they carried out a wide-ranging conspiracy to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

In its federal lawsuit in Manhattan, the Democratic National Committee said that top officials in Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russian government and its military spy agency to hurt Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and tilt the election to Trump by hacking Democratic Party computers.

The lawsuit alleged that Trump’s campaign “gleefully welcomed Russia’s help” in the 2016 election and accuses it of being a “racketeering enterprise” that worked in tandem with Moscow.

“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,” said Tom Perez, chair of the DNC. “This constituted an act of unprecedented treachery.”

The suit prompted Trump to send a Friday evening tweet that called the Democrats “obstructionist” and promised a counterattack based on his longstanding assertion that Clinton committed a crime with her personal email server.

“This can be good news in that we will now counter for the DNC Server that they refused to give to the FBI, the Wendy Wasserman Schultz Servers and Documents held by the Pakistani mystery man and Clinton Emails,” Trump, a Republican, wrote.

Trump appeared to refer to Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who chaired the DNC during the election when its servers were hacked, and a Pakistan-born information technology worker found by the House of Representatives inspector general to have inappropriately accessed congressional data.

The campaign operation Trump has already set up ahead of the 2020 president election called the lawsuit frivolous and characterized it as a fundraising effort.