http://jampac.us/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/042517cw2.pdf

I read through it all and thought I’d post some of the more interesting parts.

The DNC lawyers (hereafter referred to simply as The DNC.) try to argue that the court has no right to judge how they enforce internal rules.

THE COURT:

You’re talking about the DNC’s charter

now.

MR. SPIVA:

Yes, their bylaws, which is where this

purported obligation arises to remain neutral as between the

candidates.

THE COURT:

Article V, Section 4.



The DNC says their duty to conduct a free and fair election is a “purported obligation”.

The plaintiffs lawyers (hereafter referred to as The American People) shoot that argument down completely:

in Madigan vs. Illinois, a 2006

opinion from the Supreme Court, the Court held:

“Consistent with our precedent and the First

Amendment, states may maintain fraud actions when

fundraisers make false or misleading representations

designed to deceive donors about how their donations

are used.”

Furthermore:

This is not a case about enforcing political promises.

They want you to think that, I believe, because they want to

paint this case in a line of cases that have been filed

throughout the years where candidates may make political

promises, and then disappointed voters bring lawsuits to

enforce those promises or seek damages in one form or another.

But that’s not what this case is about. We’re not talking

about campaign rhetoric. We’re not talking about a campaign

platform of any kind.

What we’re talking about here is the very core of what

our democracy runs on, the very basis for our democracy, which

is the conduct of free and fair elections. That’s the basis,

that’s the bedrock on which the claims of this case take off,

because the election — the elections — as American history

has developed, the conduct of those elections, for better or

worse, has come under the domain of the two major political

parties in this country.

And then The American People address the real reason the Democrats want you to get all riled up about Russian intervention and take your eyes off of the Real Ball:

I just think the context of when this complaint was

drafted is important. We drafted this complaint and filed it

in June of 2016, which was before the DNC primary — or the DNC

convention occurred in July. And, at the time, the evidence

that we had access to consisted of this set of documents that your Honor referenced in your prefatory remarks that were

released by a figure named Guccifer 2.0.

And the core document that was released by that

individual on that website purports to be an internal DNC

memorandum, which outlines a strategy for advancing Hillary

Clinton to the nomination of the Democratic Party before the

primaries had even really gotten off the ground. And this was

at a time — you know, Bernie Sanders I believe had announced

for about a month before this particular memo came out. But we

think that’s clear evidence of what the DNC’s intent was

throughout the primary process. It was to leverage their

connections with the media in order to advance Hillary

Clinton’s candidacy at the expense of everybody else. These additional leaks have shown that DNC officials

participated in creating and disseminating media narratives to

undermine Bernie Sanders and advance Hillary Clinton.

It shows former DNC Chair Donna Brazile giving debate questions in advance to Hillary Clinton during the primaries.

It shows the DNC at one point changing its donor

policies specifically to favor Hillary Clinton.

It shows the scheduling of debates to favor Hillary

Clinton over Bernie Sanders.

It shows, in general, the DNC pouring its considerable

resources and relationships into propelling Hillary Clinton to

the nomination.

And then the judge makes The DNC look like unprepared idiots:

THE COURT:

Does the DNC help to fund the state

primaries?

MR. SPIVA:

Uhm, you mean literally, the mechanics of

the primaries, your Honor, the actual holding of the election,

the primary election?

THE COURT:

Does the DNC, with the money that it

raises, use some of that money to help fund the states put on

their individual state primaries?

MR. SPIVA:

I don’t believe so, your Honor. No.

THE COURT:

But you don’t know.

And then The DNC alleges it has the inherent right to fix elections:

The party could have favored a candidate. Even if it were true, that’s the business

of the party, and it’s not justiciable.

THE COURT:

All right. Thank you, Counsel.

MR. SPIVA:

Thank you. And I’m happy to answer —

THE COURT:

Oh, no, I’ve got more questions.

And then the judge hands it over to The American People to slam dunk The DNC:

THE COURT:

What does the plaintiff say on the

operational aspect of the DNC?

MR. BECK:

Well, your Honor, I’m shocked to hear that

we can’t define what it means to be evenhanded and impartial.

If that were the case, we couldn’t have courts. I mean, that’s

what courts do every day, is decide disputes in an evenhanded

and impartial manner. I think that’s why the Democratic National Committee has it in

its charter, because if you don’t have the organization that is

responsible for organizing in this very large sense the

nominating process for president, which entails multiple

elections in every state of the union, if you’re not evenhanded

and impartial, then you don’t have a democratic process. I

think it’s that simple.

And then we get into the whole gist of what is a democracy and what constitutes fraud.

THE COURT:

Let me ask counsel. If a person is fraudulently

induced to donate to a charitable organization, does he have

standing to sue the person who induced the donation?

The DNC tries to weasel out of giving a direct answer to the question and instead addresses other hypothetical situations other than what the judge asked. The judge then allows The American People their reaction to The DNC’s response and this is what they had to say:

THE COURT:

First, your response to their answers.

MR. BECK:

Yes. And I’ll take the last part first,

which was the question your Honor had posed, is there — and

I’m paraphrasing it, but is there a material difference between

a campaign promise, such as “read my lips, no new taxes,” and

representations that are made in the DNC’s own charter?

And, quite frankly, if what defendant — or what the

DNC has just said is true — and I really hope it’s not true,

but if what he said is true, then I think it’s a really sad day

for democracy in this country. Because what essentially the

DNC has now stated in a court of law is that it believes that

there is no enforceable obligation to run the primary elections

of this country’s democracy in a fair and impartial manner.

And if that’s the case — and I think counsel just said it himself — then really, you know, the sky’s the limit

in terms of what the DNC and any party, for that matter, can

do.

After a few hours of wrangling over jurisdictional issues and so on, I found this to be quite interesting:

(The American People)

it just doesn’t make sense to me why

somebody would participate in a political process by paying

money into the process, when they knew that that process was

rigged from the start, which is what we’re alleging.



To which The DNC replies:

I think actually the opposite conclusion is more

logical and certainly apparent, that you would to try to beat

the system, if you viewed it as rigged.

The DNC tried to say that there can’t be a class action because:

we would still have the right, your Honor, to challenge each

class member’s standing. Did they rely on statements of the

DNC? Did they even know about them? Would they have not given

if they had known? Same with the Sanders subclass. Same with

the third subclass.

To which The American People replied:

MR. BECK:

Again, I think that — I think,

fundamentally, people give money to candidates and can — and

political parties, because they believe that we have a fair

democratic process. And I think that that’s a baseline

assumption whenever a donation is made. I think that there’s a fundamental understanding in

this country that’s taught from a very early age, certainly I

remember it, that we live in a democracy. And I think a

fundamental part of what a democracy means is that elections

are not conducted in this biased and predetermined way. And I

think that everybody who seeks to participate in the political

process, especially when they’re going to the trouble of

cutting a check to a candidate that they support or a party

that they support, they believe that those candidates and

entities are taking place in a process that is fair and impartial, because they believe in a process that’s democratic.

So, I don’t think someone necessarily needs to read

the articles we’ve cited or the charter to be in the class of

people that have been defrauded or deceived or unjustly treated

in terms of the unjust enrichment claim by the DNC’s conduct.

And in their closing statements, The American People stated:

If it’s the case that an entity, the DNC, its

chairperson can rig an election, and there’s no remedy at law

for people who’ve made financial contributions on the basis of

what they’ve omitted to tell the public, well, I submit that

that’s a really dire road for this country to be on.



Then the judge closed the proceedings with this statement: