Thread by @abfrancois

1/x This thread attempts to explain as neutrally as possible what happened in the #DNCFraudLawsuit

2/x As I go through I will post link to various court documents in the case. My point here is not to make political or moral claims.

3/x. Plaintiffs are a class of voters who sued the dnc, alleging that it failed to live up to its bylaws to be neutral in the primaries

4/x. In their complaint, and this is very important, they did not raise any claims grounded in federal law.

5/x. Rather all their claims were based on state law. Here is a link to the complaint:
jampac.us/wp-content/upl…

6/x. As you'll see the basic theory of the case is that the dnc committed fraud, misrepresentation and other consumer-type claims not just

7/x when it allegedly favored Clinton but also because it failed to protect voter information in the dnc hack.

8/x When you sue in federal court using state law claims, the only way the court has jurisdiction is if there is diversity.

9/x the long and short of diversity is that plaintiffs and defendants must be citizens of different states. Also in order for the court to

10/x have jurisdiction over the case the plaintiffs must have standing. This means plaintiffs must show that defendants harmed them in a

11/x specific way that is not general to all members of the public and that the court can issue an order that will fix the harm.

12/x the dnc never answered the complaint. In other words they neither admitted nor denied what plaintiffs alleged in any way.

13/x. Instead they moved to dismiss on several grounds, including jurisdiction, standing and others. Here is brief jampac.us/wp-content/upl…

14/x. Again what is important to understand is that at this stage of the process, what the dnc did was to ask the court to do the following

15/x. Assume for the sake of argument that everything plaintiffs says about the facts is true, they still do not win because the law says so

16/x. In the interest of completeness here is the plaintiffs brief. jampac.us/wp-content/upl…

17/x. Again reading the briefs carefully you will note plaintiffs put their best factual narrative forward and ask the court to accept it.

18/x. The court does just that. Since dnc has not answered the complaint, the rules of procedure require the court to accept the facts.

19/x. So in its order dismissing the case the court says that it assumes everything the plaintiffs say factually as true.

20/x. Here is the court's opinion. jampac.us/wp-content/upl…

21/x. The court says several things. First, there is not complete diversity. Second, plaintiffs lack standing for many of the claims.

22/x but most importantly reading the opinion it is clear that the court could not find solid precedent for the argument that primary voters

23/x could sue a political party using essentially consumer fraud and consumer protection type claims. Here is why this matters.

24/x Courts in general and federal courts in particular live and breathe on precedent. When a party asks a court to do x the court is first

25/x foremost going to look for past cases that are similar or somewhat analogous. If there are no such cases then you are asking the court

26/x to make new law. Sometimes court do that but most trial courts do not jump at the chance to do it. This is what happened here.

27/x plaintiffs asked a federal trial court to issue a ruling against a political party in a contested primary using a case theory for which

28/x there was no precedent and in which the complaint had quite a few holes. The court in essence said no thank you.

29/x. So far I've seen tweets claiming the court said the case had merits but it dismissed it on technical grounds. That is untrue.

30/x Instead the court *assumed* but did not decide that the facts of the complaints were true and then held the law was not there.

31/x If you are inclined to believe with absolute certainty that the dnc committed fraud, neither this thread nor the court opinion itself

32/x will convince you otherwise. And I expect that some of the replies I will get will be of the variety that I am a shill of some sort.

33/x For my part I don't intend to get into a rehashing of the primary. My only point is that if we are going to discuss this,

34/34 let us at a bare minimum be clear about the procedural posture of the case and what the court opinion says and does not say.