Not Over: Sanders’ Supporters File Appeal in DNC Fraud Lawsuit

The lawyers whose fraud suit against the Democratic National Committee was thrown out last month are appealing, and plan to fund the appeal with proceeds from the sale of a book they say will tell the truth about what really happened in last year’s Democratic primary.

As Hurricane Irma headed toward South Florida last week, attorney Elizabeth Lee Beck of Miami-Dade County rushed to file the notice of appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, and did a Facebook Live video to tell everyone the news. Not only was the team of four lawyers proceeding with the appeal, but Jared Beck, her husband and law partner, had signed a contract with Skyhorse Publishing to publish his book about the rigged 2016 Democratic primary just days before Hillary Clinton’s book, “What Happened,” was released.

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“It will be a measured, accurate and comprehensive response to her book,” Elizabeth Lee Beck told LifeZette on Wednesday.

Skyhorse is an independent publishing house, founded in 2006, that is on track to release 900 new books this year. One of those was Roger Stone’s book on the 2016 presidential campaign, “The Making of the President 2016,” released on January 31.

Judge William Zloch of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, a Reagan appointee, dismissed the DNC fraud lawsuit on August 25, saying the lawyers hadn’t shown a direct link between the plaintiffs’ decisions to make contributions to the DNC and Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and public statements by DNC officials that they would be impartial in the primary.

The suit was originally filed in federal court in Fort Lauderdale on June 28, 2016, against both the DNC and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), former chair of the DNC, on behalf of contributors to the Sanders campaign and contributors to the DNC. It named 151 plaintiffs representing all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The suit, Wilding v. DNC Services Corporation, is named for the first plaintiff on the list, Carol Wilding of Pompano Beach, Florida.

The suit alleges that the DNC and Wasserman Schultz committed fraud by conspiring to rig the Democratic primary — ensuring a Clinton win by ignoring or setting out to harm the other candidates, including Sanders, all while making public statements pledging to remain neutral to allow Democratic primary voters to select the nominee in the various primary contests.

In the lawsuit, the lawyers say that the DNC’s and Wasserman Schultz’s actions were “intentional, willful, wanton, and malicious.”

“Defendants had actual knowledge of the wrongfulness of the conduct and the high probability that injury to the DNC Donor Class Plaintiffs, the Sanders Donor Class Plaintiffs, and members of the DNC Donor Class and the Sanders Donor Class would result and, despite that knowledge, intentionally pursued that course of conduct, resulting in injury,” they wrote.

The suit was filed on the heels of the Guccifer 2.0 release of documents and the WikiLeaks release of DNC emails that showed that the DNC was working hand in glove with the Clinton campaign, despite public assurances that it was remaining neutral.

The suit also accused the DNC of negligent misrepresentation, violation of the District of Columbia code, unjust enrichment, and breach of fiduciary duty.

Plaintiffs asked the court for their money back — all of it, and punitive damages on top of it, and attorney fees. The attorneys declined to name a dollar amount, but estimates are that the total amount would exceed $200 million.

At the April 215 hearing on the motion to dismiss, a lawyer for the DNC, Bruce Spiva, said that the DNC is well within its rights to choose a candidate in back rooms, and is under no obligation to abide by its charter, which says the chair of the DNC and the DNC itself shall exercise “impartiality and evenhandedness” with respect to presidential candidates and campaigns.

Spiva also called into question the meaning of the word “impartial” and said the party can essentially choose nominees however it wants to.

“We could have voluntarily decided that, ‘Look, we’re gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way,'” Spiva told the court.

Elizabeth Beck told LifeZette this week that an appeal to the 11th Circuit, if successful, would be a better result than having the case dismissed after a verdict was reached, and that she doesn’t think Judge Zloch would mind if the case came back to his court, noting that he had indicated that he took the allegations against the DNC and Wasserman Schultz very seriously.

“Clearly, our trial court wants a directive from a higher court to move forward,” she said.

All plaintiffs are still on board, and want to see the case through to the end she said. “Not a single one has withdrawn.”

The case, festering in the peripheral vision of the political landscape, is a reminder of just how angry Democrats were — not at the alleged “hacking” of the DNC servers, but at the truth that was revealed in those hacked or leaked documents … and how angry many of them still are.

In one email — released by WikiLeaks in a batch of 19,252 DNC emails on July 22, 2016, three days before the start of the Democratic National Convention — Brad Marshall, the DNC’s chief financial officer, asks other staffers how they could use Sanders’ religion, or lack of it, to hurt him with Southern Baptists.

“It might may no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief.” he wrote. “Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”

Boos rolled over the convention floor days later in Philadelphia, and when Wasserman Schultz appeared at the convention’s Florida delegation breakfast she was loudly booed and shouted down.

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She subsequently resigned as chair of the DNC, along with three other top staffers.

Bernie Sanders has not commented on the suit until recently, when he was asked about it by a caller to a talk radio show.

He kept his remarks brief, saying it’s well-known that the Democratic primary was rigged.

But Beck says it’s not really about Bernie Sanders at this point.

“I don’t really think about him very much,” she told LifeZette. “It’s the people behind him that were robbed.”

(photo credit, article image: Gage Skidmore, Flickr)