Ride the Lightning

DNC Lawsuit Against WikiLeaks Served Via Twitter

August 16, 2018

While service via Twitter and Facebook has been authorized before by courts, it remains a rare occurrence. But as TechCrunch reported on August 13^th, lawyers for the Democratic National Convention (DNC) served the lawsuit against WikiLeaks with a number of legal documents through Twitter. The lawsuit names a long list of other people and organizations, including the Russian government and Donald Trump's presidential campaign that the DNC claims conspired with WikiLeaks to hack into Hillary Clinton's emails and sway the 2016 election in Trump's favor.

Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, using the Twitter address @ProcessServiceC served @wikileaks by court order on August 10th, notifying it that all of the legal documents could be found at https://www.cohenmilsteinprocessserver.com/.

The Twitter account has no other tweets and appears to have been set up this month by Cohen Milstein for the purpose of serving papers to WikiLeaks.

The DNC filed a motion in federal court in Manhattan last month, asking for permission to subpoena WikiLeaks on Twitter after several unsuccessful attempts by email. DNC lawyers tried sending emails to an address provided on the WikiLeaks website and contacting lawyers who had represented WikiLeaks in other matters. The emails were returned as undeliverable, and the lawyers who responded said they no longer represented WikiLeaks and were not authorized to accept service.

The DNC argued that the WikiLeaks Twitter account is very active and an April tweet appeared to confirm that the organization was aware of the lawsuit. It also told the court that WikiLeaks "has more of a virtual than a physical presence."

The motion said WikiLeaks had published tweets showing an awareness of the suit. One tweet sought donations for a countersuit. Another tweet showed a screen shot of the complaint.

Though, as mentioned above, using Twitter to serve legal documents is unusual, it has legal precedent, with the DNC noting that the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California had previously decided that Twitter could be used to notify defendants who had an active account.

The DNC lawsuit argues that the massive trove of internal DNC emails released by WikiLeaks during the 2016 presidential election, including ones written by Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman John Podesta, was part of a conspiracy to damage Clinton's presidential run and "destabilize the U.S. political environment."

Other defendants in the DNC lawsuit include Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort; Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner; Trump advisers Roger Stone and George Papadopoulos; and Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr.

Without question, a case to watch.

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