WikiLeaks hit with DNC lawsuit — over Twitter

Lawyers representing the Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Friday served transparency advocates WikiLeaks with a lawsuit via Twitter, accusing the site of working with the Trump campaign and Russia to swing the 2016 election in President Trump’s favor.

The move came Friday after CBS News reported that multiple attempts by DNC lawyers to serve legal documents to WikiLeaks representatives by email were met with no response.

@wikileaks By Court order, you are being served with the following legal documents: https://t.co/ICg8qWnsUy, https://t.co/ZP2tTPJ4pb, https://t.co/RKue30s4hM, https://t.co/q5g0G1rQpQ.
All of these documents may be found here: https://t.co/NOCgvQhh2j.

— Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll Process Server (@ProcessServiceC) August 10, 2018

The DNC was one of multiple Democratic organizations hacked during the 2016 election, with the resulting emails and documents posted on WikiLeaks. The U.S. intelligence community believes Russia was behind the breach, with the intention of helping to elect Trump. 

WikiLeaks tweeted in April suggesting that the organization had received the DNC’s lawsuit, calling it frivolous, and it has reportedly not responded to any direct attempts at communication from DNC attorneys.

Democrats have gone all Scientology against @WikiLeaks. We read the DNC lawsuit. Its primary claim against @WikiLeaks is that we published their “trade secrets”. Scientology infamously tried this trick when we published their secret bibles. Didn’t work out well for them. pic.twitter.com/NfCJEMiPCo

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 22, 2018

“WikiLeaks seems to tweet daily,” the DNC noted in a court filing, according to CBS.

The subpoena served Friday deals with a suit filed earlier this year in Manhattan. 

{mosads}Last month, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers in the DNC hack amid his ongoing probe into Moscow’s 2016 election meddling.

Mueller’s probe has also focused on former Trump adviser Roger Stone, who claimed to have been in contact with WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, through an intermediary during the election. Later reports indicated that Stone himself had directly messaged the organization.

Assange has denied allegations that he collaborated with Russia or Russian hackers during the election, maintaining WikiLeaks’s public stance as a neutral repository that will receive information from any source.