A lawsuit alleging that the Trump campaign, along with Roger Stone, conspired with Russia and Wikileaks to get the contents of the DNC hack published has been tossed by a federal judge appointed by Bill Clinton:
POLITICO – A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit alleging that President Donald Trump’s campaign and former Trump adviser Roger Stone conspired with Russia and WikiLeaks to publish hacked Democratic National Committee emails during the 2016 presidential race.
U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle said in a ruling Tuesday evening that the suit’s efforts to tie the Trump campaign and Stone’s alleged actions to the nation’s capital were too flimsy for the case to proceed in a Washington, D.C., court.
“The Trump Campaign’s efforts to elect President Trump in D.C. are not suit-related contacts for those efforts did not involve acts taken in furtherance of the conspiracies to disseminate emails that harmed plaintiffs,” wrote Huvelle, an appointee of President Bill Clinton. “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.”
Not a ruling on the merits…
But Huvelle made clear that her decision was a technical one based on issues of legal jurisdiction and was not a definitive ruling on allegations that the Trump campaign struck an illicit deal with the Russians during the presidential contest.
“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.”
Two DNC donors, Roy Cockrum and Eric Schoenberg, and former DNC staffer Scott Comer, filed the suit last year, alleging that the hacking invaded their privacy and that the Trump campaign and Stone had a role in unlawful activity.
Not a resounding victory, but a win is a win.