Robert Mueller has spent months sniffing around for evidence of Russian collusion.
Now there’s been a big break in the case.
And this lawsuit could be the final nail in his coffin.
The collusion story accelerated when BuzzFeed published the Christopher Steele dossier in January 2017.
But they didn’t verify any of the information contained in the document before they published it.
That led to Aleksej Gubarev – a Russian businessman – suing BuzzFeed for libel because the dossier claimed he was connected to the Russians who allegedly hacked the Democrat National Committee server.
BuzzFeed’s defense is that the Democrat National Committee’s servers will show evidence that proves this connection is true and force the judge to throw the lawsuit out of court.
But the DNC will not comply with their requests.
This is similar to how the DNC would not allow the FBI to examine their servers after they claimed they were hacked.
Critics contend the DNC is afraid to have anyone examine their servers because it would show they weren’t hacked by the Russians at all.
But the rubber is about to meet the road.
BuzzFeed has subpoenaed the DNC and has filed a motion in court to force them to comply.
Vanity Fair reports:
“In a nutshell: BuzzFeed believes the D.N.C. has information that could show a link between Gubarev and the e-mail hacking, which would undercut his libel claim. “We’re asking a federal court to force the D.N.C. to follow the law and allow BuzzFeed to fully defend its First Amendment rights,” a BuzzFeed spokesperson wrote in an e-mail.
BuzzFeed’s motion asserts that the D.N.C., citing privacy concerns, has been unwilling to comply with a subpoena for that information. As BuzzFeed’s lawyers argue: “The material requested from the D.N.C.—which amounts only to the digital remnants left by the Russian state operatives who hacked their systems—is highly relevant to Defendants’ ability to establish the truth of the allegedly defamatory claims about them in the Dossier. And the D.N.C. has identified neither privilege nor burden that would prevent them from complying with the Subpoena.” In legal papers, the D.N.C. has argued that disclosing the digital signatures, supposedly left by the Russia-directed hacking organizations known as Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, would inevitably expose details of the D.N.C.’s information systems, possibly making them more vulnerable to another hack. (A D.N.C. spokeswoman did not immediately have a comment late Tuesday afternoon.)”
BuzzFeed has undertaken one other course of action that could completely obliterate Mueller’s collusion investigation.
The website has hired former high ranking FBI officials to investigate the claims made in the dossier.
Truth would be an absolute defense in the lawsuit.
But if these investigators strike out, it would be another piece of evidence confirming there was no collusion with Russia.
We will keep you up to date on any new developments in this story.
