DNC Lawyers: The DNC Has the Right to Secretly Chose Their Candidates

The DNC is now “feeling the Bern,” to use a phrase that became popular among Bernie Sanders supporters during the campaign for the Democratic nomination for president during 2016. After revelations that the DNC and its top leadership rigged the 2016 primaries to give Hillary Clinton an e.dge over Bernie Sanders, a group of Sanders supporters filed suite against the DNC.

In battling the suit, attorneys for the DNC and its then chairman have made some extraordinary claims in court — claims that call into question the integrity of the Democrat Party’s primaries themselves.

First, they assert that the court cannot rule on whether the DNC remained neutral during the process of selecting a nominee.

Shortly into the hearing, DNC attorneys claim Article V, Section 4 of the DNC Charter—stipulating that the DNC chair and their staff must ensure neutrality in the Democratic presidential primaries—is “a discretionary rule that it didn’t need to adopt to begin with.” Based on this assumption, DNC attorneys assert that the court cannot interpret, claim, or rule on anything associated with whether the DNC remains neutral in their presidential primaries.

If that’s not strange enough, these attorneys then argued that Sanders supporters knew the process was rigged, so they have no right to complain.

The attorneys representing the DNC have previously argued that Sanders supporters knew the primaries were rigged, therefore annulling any potential accountability the DNC may have. In the latest hearing, they doubled down on this argument: “The Court would have to find that people who fervently supported Bernie Sanders and who purportedly didn’t know that this favoritism was going on would have not given to Mr. Sanders, to Senator Sanders, if they had known that there was this purported favoritism.”

Attorney’s representing the supporters of Mr. Sanders were not going to put up this.

Jared Beck, the attorney representing Sanders supporters in the class action lawsuit, retorted that the DNC Charter is not akin to political rhetoric a politician would use during a campaign, but rather an inherent and important part of democracy in America. The entire argument of the DNC in this lawsuit is to conflate the promises of a political candidate with those of an election arbiter bound to neutrality by the DNC Charter, and to claim that fraudulent inducement cannot ever be proven as the DNC attorneys allege, “I think there’s an impossible showing of causation.”

“People paid money in reliance on the understanding that the primary elections for the Democratic nominee—nominating process in 2016 were fair and impartial,” Beck said. “And that’s not just a bedrock assumption that we would assume just by virtue of the fact that we live in a democracy, and we assume that our elections are run in a fair and impartial manner. But that’s what the Democratic National Committee’s own charter says. It says it in black and white. And they can’t deny that.” He added, “Not only is it in the charter, but it was stated over and over again in the media by the Democratic National Committee’s employees, including Congresswoman Wassermann Schultz, that they were, in fact, acting in compliance with the charter. And they said it again and again, and we’ve cited several instances of that in the case.”

The point is well-taken. To take matters further, if the DNC can select a nominee using a process akin to the proverbial “smoke-filled room,” then what is the point in having primary elections in the first place? In effect, they are a sham.

Later in the hearing, attorneys representing the DNC claim that the Democratic National Committee would be well within their rights to “go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way.” By pushing the argument throughout the proceedings of this class action lawsuit, the Democratic National Committee is telling voters in a court of law that they see no enforceable obligation in having to run a fair and impartial primary election.

What we have here is a DNC accustomed to engaging in deceptive politics, a behavior only amplified by the participation and influence of Mrs. Clinton in the process. They got caught, and all they can do in defending themselves from the wrath of Sanders supporters is to fall back on bizarre arguments in court that claim that those supporters have no right to complain since they should have known the system was rigged.

In a perverse sort of way, the DNC can be seen as correct. Yes, everyone should have known they are corrupt, especially with Hillary involved.

Source: Observer