Shan Wu is a former federal prosecutor who also served as counsel to Attorney General Janet Reno. He practices law in Washington, DC, where his recent representations include defending Rick Gates in the Russian probe. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.

(CNN) A lawsuit filed by the Democratic National Committee over interference in the 2016 election summons another Watergate-era specter: the DNC's 1972 lawsuit filed against the Nixon campaign over the Watergate burglary. There are obvious similarities between the two. But the 1972 lawsuit ended well for the DNC, with a $750,000 settlement on the day Nixon resigned. It's unlikely that the 2018 lawsuit will repeat the successes of 1972.

The facts are really different and hard to prove

While in both cases the DNC was suing the victorious Republican campaign over election interference, even as contemporaneous criminal investigations were being conducted by special counsels, the differences between the two cases dwarf any superficial similarities.

Shan Wu

The simple facts of the Watergate lawsuit arose from a physical break-in conducted by burglars -- acting at the behest of the Nixon campaign -- who were caught red-handed at the scene of the crime. The 2018 lawsuit, on the other hand, arises from facts that are anything but simple, as evidenced by a list of defendants that includes: Russia; Wikileaks; Wikileaks founder Julian Assange; Russian intelligence agencies; Russian intelligence hackers, with names like "Guccifer 2.0;" Trump campaign officials like Paul Manafort and Rick Gates; Donald Trump's relatives, and, of course, the Trump campaign.

So a major difference in 2018 is that a foreign nation (Russia) and its intelligence apparatus is being sued. This difference alone raises numerous legal obstacles, like foreign sovereign immunity, and will require litigation over the applicability of exceptions to the general rule that foreign countries cannot be sued in the United States. Moreover, the 2018 complaint alleges that all these defendants worked together in a conspiracy. The ability to prove this is even more complex and difficult, since all these different defendants will need to be tied together.

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