“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 Chair Tom Perez said in a statement. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images DNC sues Russian government, Trump campaign, WikiLeaks alleging 2016 conspiracy plot The Trump campaign slams the legal maneuver as 'frivolous.'

The Democratic National Committee alleges in a new multimillion dollar lawsuit that the Russian government, the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks engaged in a sweeping plot to interfere in the 2016 election in President Donald Trump's favor.

The lawsuit accuses top officials for the Trump campaign, Russian government officials and their military intelligence service, the GRU, of engaging in a vast, coordinated effort to inflict damage on Trump’s general election rival, Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.


The complaint, filed on Friday, alleges the groups schemed to undermine her candidacy by breaching computer systems for the DNC and spreading materials seized on their servers.

The news, first reported by The Washington Post, signals the largest escalation so far of legal efforts by the Democratic Party to resolve allegations of foreign meddling by Russian operatives and possible coordination with Trump campaign officials.

POLITICO Playbook newsletter Sign up today to receive the #1-rated newsletter in politics Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

“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 Chair 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."

The complaint alleges that through communications between Russian operatives and top Trump campaign officials, “Russian agents formed an agreement to promote Donald Trump’s candidacy through illegal means.”

The Trump campaign slammed the legal maneuver as "frivolous" in a statement on Friday, casting it as "a last-ditch effort to substantiate the baseless Russian collusion allegations."

“This is a sham lawsuit about a bogus Russian collusion claim filed by a desperate, dysfunctional, and nearly insolvent Democratic Party,” said Brad Parscale, the campaign manager for Trump's 2020 re-election bid.

Parscale added that if the suit moved forward, the Trump campaign would use the discovery process to explore "actual corruption" he alleges took place by the DNC to "influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election."

Trump took to Twitter to react to the lawsuit from what he called “the Obstructionist Democrats.“ The president said the action could spell “good news“ for his campaign because “we will now counter for the DNC Server that they refused to give to the FBI.“

The DNC disputed a similar charge from Trump during the 2016 campaign, saying it provided the FBI information on the server through a third-party vendor.

In seeking monetary compensation for the email hacks, the Democratic Party is borrowing from the playbook it put into action during the Watergate scandal, when it sued then-President Richard Nixon's reelection campaign for $1 million. The Democratic Party alleged in the 1972 filing that the damages were incurred during the break-in of the famed Watergate building.

The protracted legal battle, which ran concurrently with the special prosecutor’s probe of Watergate and the House and Senate hearings about White House involvement in the break-in ended in a 1974 settlement that netted the DNC $750,000.

In July 2016, WikiLeaks published a trove of roughly 20,000 emails that hackers seized from the DNC during the campaign. The breach and release fueled news cycles, resulting in a string of negative headlines for the Democratic Party. The messages appeared to show favoritism among top DNC officials of Clinton over her Democratic primary opponent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The leaking organization in October then released thousands of emails from Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta. Top U.S. intelligence officials said the leaks appeared to be connected to Russian intelligence operatives.

Clinton has attributed her defeat in 2016, among several other things, to the release of the hacked DNC and Podesta emails.

WikiLeaks and the Russian Embassy to the United States did not immediately return requests for comment on the DNC lawsuit. In a tweet, however, WikiLeaks argued its organization was "immune" to the legal action.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. But the president and senior White House officials have been effusive in rejecting allegations that the Trump campaign coordinated or colluded with Russian officials during the 2016 presidential election.

On Wednesday, the president tweeted that “there was NO COLLUSION (except by the Dems)!”

Russian meddling efforts continue to be investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of federal prosecutors, selected to lead the Justice Department’s inquiry into whether Trump campaign officials colluded with foreign operatives to affect the election.

Mueller in February unveiled charges against 13 Russian nationals and three foreign entities on charges relating to the 2016 election meddling, alleging a coordinated online campaign to sway voters in favor of Trump.

While lawmakers in the Senate continue to probe the allegations, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee said last month they found no evidence that Trump or his aides colluded with foreign officials in 2016. Democrats on the committee panned the findings.